Forms are a great way to get to know the people who shop at your online store and make them your loyal customers. You can use this data collected in the forms to promote your products, improve customer support, and boost sales.

Squarespace is one of the most popular and user-friendly e-commerce platforms; it allows you to create and manage your online store. With Squarespace, you can create multiple stores, personalize their appearance and feel, and create lasting connections with your customers.

Let’s look at how to build forms with Squarespace and how they help you grow your e-commerce store.

Understanding Squarespace Forms

Squarespace forms allow you to collect information from people who visit your website. It also helps you collect feedback, generate leads, and product improvement ideas.

The following are the types of forms available on Squarespace:

• Contact forms:  records visitor and customer information, such as name, email address, and phone number.
• Order forms: collects information about customers’ purchases, order details, shipping addresses, and payment information.
• Registration forms: collect data from web visitors to sign up for events, newsletters, or an account.
• Survey forms: gathers feedback from customers or visitors to identify pain points or measure satisfaction for product developments and improvements.
• Polls: It enables you to gauge people’s opinions on a particular topic such as marketing campaigns, product ideas, and more.
• Payment forms: allows you to securely receive payments for your products or services from customers.

Benefits of Using Squarespace Forms in Your Store

• Lead Generation: Squarespace forms allow you to market to your store visitors and follow up with them to convert them to customers.
• Product improvement/Development: You can also use form feedback to figure out what customers don’t like about your products and how you can make them better.
• Boost sales: Forms enable customers to seamlessly contact your store and make purchases. This allows you to personalize promotions and convert visitors to long-term customers.
• Brand Promotions and Campaigns: You can also use form data to guide your marketing efforts. For example, you can give exclusive discounts to newsletter subscribers to encourage people to constantly engage with your brand.

Planning Your Form

Creating a plan for your Squarespace form ensures that it appeals to your target audience and accurately captures the information you need. Follow these steps to create an effective Squarespace form:

1. Identify the Purpose of the Form

Identifying what you want to achieve with the form will guide the type of information you collect and the form features you need.

2. Determine the Information to Collect

Next, ensure your form captures the information you need. For example, if you are creating an order form, you will need to collect personal details, product details, and shipping information.

Also, only collect relevant information; long forms tend to frustrate customers or make them skeptical.

3. Designing the Form to Match Your Store’s Aesthetics

While designing your form, use colors, fonts, and images that fit your brand.

Step-By-Step Guide to Adding a Form to Your Squarespace Store

Method 1- Using a Third-Party Form Builder

Squarespace has its built-in forms, but using a third-party form like Formplus provides you with more features, simplicity, and data security. It also allows you to seamlessly integrate the form with other customer service tools.

Here’s how to add forms to your Squarespace using a third-party form builder (Formplus):

1. Create and Customize Your Form

• Go to the Formplus template library.
• Search and select the form that fits your needs such as order form, payment form, contact form, and more. 
• Choose your preferred settings- form privacy, notification, confirmation messages, and others.
• Go to sharing options and choose embed code
• Copy the embed code.

2. Add the Form to Your Squarespace Store

• Go to your Squarespace website and open the page where you want to place the form.
• In the Squarespace editor, click “+” and select “Code“
• Paste the embed code
• Click on Apply.

Why Use A Third-Party Form Builder

• More features: Third-party form builders often offer more features than the Squarespace form builder. For example, they offer more form templates, customization options, and integrations.
• Better customization: Third-party form builders often give you more control over the look and feel of your forms, allowing you to create forms that match your brand.
• Integrations: Formplus has a Zapier integration that allows you to manage forms and other services such as email marketing platforms and CRMs on the same platform. This allows you to effectively manage customer data and achieve your goals faster.
• Ease of use: You don’t need to have any coding experience to create engaging and beautiful forms with Formplus. Unlike Squarespace’s native form builder, where you need to write and modify code to effectively customize your forms.

Method 2- Using Squarespace Native Form Builder

Here’s a step-by-step guide to help you create and manage forms on your Squarespace store using the native builder on the platform:

1. Open the Squarespace Editor

• Log in to your Squarespace account.
• Click the “Edit” at the top left corner of the page.

2. Choose a Form Block

• Select “Add Block” in the top left corner of the page.
• Search for “Form” and click the form block to add the form to your page.

3. Customizing the Form Fields

• Go to the form block then select the form editor.
• Customize the form fields by adding or changing new fields.
• You can also rename the form by changing its label.
• To require a form field, click on the field and select the “Required” checkbox.

4. Adding Form Submission Actions  (e.g., Email Notifications)

• Go to the form editor, and click the “Actions” tab.
•  Select the “Add Action” button and select the action you want such as “Send Email Notification“.
• In the “Send Email Notification” dialog box, enter the email addresses that you want to receive notifications.
• You can also customize the email message that will be sent.

5. Integrating with Third-Party Tools (Optional)

You can integrate Squarespace forms with third-party tools, such as MailChimp, Salesforce, and HubSpot. This allows you to automatically send form submissions to these tools.

If you want to integrate a third-party platform using an API key, you’ll need to first set up an account with that third-party integration tool. Next, get an API key and add it to the Squarespace form.

Optimizing Your Form for Conversion

There are several reasons why your forms may be getting low responses. Optimizing your form helps you identify those reasons and fix them.

Here are some tips to help you optimize your form:

1. Place the Form in Strategic Locations

Your forms should be easy to locate for customers, so don’t place them in an obscure place most customers would find hard to see or click. Also, don’t overload one page with too many forms – it’ll be too confusing for visitors and you’ll end up losing out on potential customers.

1. Ensure Mobile Responsiveness 

Ensure your forms are mobile-friendly, so your visitors can fill them out on their phones or tablets. The simplest way to do this is to use a form builder like Formplus that supports mobile devices

1. Use Clear and Compelling Call-To-Action (CTA) Buttons

Clearly state the purpose of the form such as “Join our community” or “Buy now for a 20% discount.” Using vague descriptions may confuse visitors and you won’t capture enough responses.

1. A/B Tests for Improved Performance

Before fully launching your form, run an A/B test to see which version of your form customers are more likely to engage with. A/B testing is a process of testing different versions of your form to see which one performs better.

Ensuring Form Security and Privacy

Form security and privacy ensures that your customer’s personal information remains private and that they are not vulnerable to fraud. Customers will lose trust in your brand if their data gets compromised or defrauded because of your poor form of security measures.

Here are the steps to follow to ensure the data you collected with your form remains safe and secure:

1. Understanding Squarespace’s Built-in Security Measures

Squarespace data privacy and security seriously and has several built-in security measures in place to protect your forms and the data they collect. These measures include SSL encryption, two-factor authentication, and regular security audits.

2. Implementing SSL Encryption for Data Protection

Squarespace comes with built-in security, but you can an extra layer of security by adding SSL encryption to your forms to ensure your data is safe while it’s in transit and storage.

You need to obtain an SSL certification from a certificate authority to implement SSL encryption on your forms. You could also simply use a form builder with SSL encryption like Formplus, you don’t have to manually set up your SSL certification, or pay separately for it.

3. Adding a Privacy Policy and GDPR Compliance

It is a document that outlines how personal data is collected, used, and shared. Your privacy policy should also explain how visitors can opt out of data collection and how they can request that their data be deleted.

Analyzing Form Performance and Data

After launching your form, track its performance to make sure it’s meeting your expectations. This will help you decide whether or not to optimize your form.

Here’s a step-by-step guide to help you check  how well your form is doing on Squarespace:

1. Accessing Form Analytics on Squarespace

Squarespace analytics tools help you understand how visitors are interacting with your forms and how you can improve their performance. Here’s how to access form analytics on Squarespace:

• Go to the “Forms” section of your Squarespace account-  you will see a list of all of your forms.
• Click on the “Analytics” tab to see the analytics for that form.
• Select the metric you want to track- form views, submissions, conversion rate, bounce rate, and average time spent on form.

2. Interpreting Form Conversion Metrics

The conversion rate is one of the most important metrics to track when analyzing your form performance. It is the percentage of visitors who submit your form.

If you’re seeing that your form isn’t converting as much as you’d like, try using the form optimization tips or modifying questions and designs to get more submissions.

3. Using Data to Improve Your Store’s User Experience

You can use the form data collected to improve the user experience with your store. For example, you can use the data to identify the most popular products or services in your store.

You can also create targeted marketing campaigns based on visitors’ indicated interests, increasing your chances of converting them.

• Trackable: Squarespace Forms are trackable, so you can see how many people are filling them out and where they’re coming from.
• Integrations: Squarespace Forms can be integrated with a variety of other apps, such as Mailchimp, Google Sheets, and Salesforce.

Troubleshooting Common Form Issues

Here’s a list of common Squarespace form errors and how to fix them:

1. Form Display Problems

This happens for different reasons, such as incorrect form code, a missing plugin, or a problem with the website’s theme. You can fix this by properly formatting the form for all devices- desktop, tablet, and mobile.

Also, check that the form is enabled and located in a visible area with no elements blocking it.

2. Form Submission Errors

• Clear error messages when respondents skip required form fields.
• Ensure the form is mobile responsive and compatible across all browsers.
• Notify respondents if they are using a firewall or spam filter that’s blocking the form.

3. Spam and Bot Submissions

• Use a CAPTCHA to verify that the form is being submitted by a human.
• Monitor your form submissions for scripted responses and other suspicious activities.
• Use a honeypot field to capture spambots.
• Use a spam filter to block spam submissions.

Additional Tips and Advanced Form Features

Here are some amazing strategies and features to improve your customer experience and conversion rate:

1. Using Conditional Logic for Dynamic Forms

Conditional logic is a feature that allows you to show or hide form fields based on the user’s input. It allows you to tailor the form questions to the individual user.

For example, you could use conditional logic to show a field for the user’s email address only if they select the “I would like to receive promotional offers” option.

2. Creating Multi-Step Forms for Better User Experience

This helps you to break down a long form into multiple pages to improve user experience and boost conversion rate. 

If you’re using Squarespace to create multi-step forms, you’ll need to make a section for each step. You’ll also need to add a button to take the user to the next step.

You can also simply use the Formplus multi-step form pre-built template to build your form in minutes without having to manually create sections/pages for your forms.

3. Custom CSS Styling for Form Enhancement

You can use custom CSS to make Squarespace forms look more professional and fit your website design. Here’s how to add custom CSS to your forms:

• • Go to form block
  • Select Design
  • Click Custom CSS

• Paste your custom CSS code.

Conclusion

As an e-commerce business, forms are a great way to improve customer experience and manage their orders. They help you collect customer information, and better serve customers.

Using a user-friendly and effective form builder like Formplus allows you to create beautiful, engaging forms that are easy for customers to fill out. Formplus analytics also allows you to monitor customer behavior and identify their pain points to improve their experience.