There just aren’t enough hours in the day.

Chances are you’ve said that, thought that, or heard someone else expressing the same sentiment. And unfortunately it often feels all too true. With a growing to-do list, your day never seems to get any longer.

While it would be awesome if Hermione Granger’s time turner actually existed (yes, that’s a Harry Potter reference) and we could all fit 12 hours of work into an eight-hour day, but that’s simply not possible.

If only…

When business won’t slow down long enough for you to get through all the things you need to do in a day, the best alternative is to figure out how to do your work faster or simplify the process.

That’s exactly what web forms do. Almost everything you do at work can benefit from a well-defined process, and almost every process can be translated into a form, saving you time, reducing repetitive work, cutting out bottlenecks, and helping you get more done in less time. It’s not magic; it’s just the power of web forms.

Here are four ways to accelerate business processes with web forms.

1. Faster Customer Onboarding

Are you gaining customers faster than your onboarding process can handle them? Maybe it’s time to start looking for ways that your customer onboarding procedures can be accelerated. Maybe there are steps in your process that don’t contribute to greater customer satisfaction and understanding. Maybe there are parts of your process that can be eliminated or automated. Maybe you’re still relying on paper forms and adding waste instead of cutting it out.

Whatever the reason, it’s important to go back to basics with your customer onboarding process and consider what information you really need to get out of the process. Ask yourself:

• What is it most important to learn from the customer?
• Who in my company needs to know what information?
• What’s the simplest way for me to gather client information and deliver to members of my team that need to know it?
• Do I need to have a phone call or in-person meeting, or could this information more easily be gathered in a web form?
• Where does miscommunication usually happen during onboarding and is it a people problem or a process problem?

If your onboarding process contains standard questions that every client answers before beginning an engagement, it saves time on your end and theirs to create a web form to allow them to answer those questions at their own pace and submit them to you when they’re finished.

Dharma Merchant Services was able to streamline their own onboarding process and reduce the time it usually took by 78 percent by implementing a FormAssembly web form onboarding solution. In addition to the drastic time savings, other benefits they saw included:

• Happy customers and positive feedback
• Less back-and-forth over the onboarding processes
• Elimination of communication bottlenecks
• Reduced time spent on the phone by salespeople

Dharma’s onboarding process is now fast and hassle-free with FormAssembly forms!

2. Streamlined Internal Processes

Sometimes it’s not client work that slows you down, it’s everything else. At FormAssembly, we use web forms to speed up several internal processes and the result is less time spent on minor details and administrative work and more time spent on improving FormAssembly and keeping our customers satisfied.

Here are some of the main ways we use FormAssembly to speed up internal work on our own team:

• New Hire Onboarding: FormAssembly can be a lot to learn when new hires first start jumping into the tool and understanding its uses and benefits. To get people up to speed quickly, we use a guided training (built on FormAssembly) that leads new hires through FormAssembly, from the basics to more advanced info. The form also acts as a sort of quiz to test employees’ knowledge and see how well they’re catching on to how FormAssembly works. The training is self-guided and frees up other managers from extensive onboarding work with the new members of their team. All it takes is a quick check-in on answers to each section of the training to gauge employee understanding and see if some areas still need work.

Our new-hire onboarding form is an all-in-one quiz and learning guide.

• Vacation Requests: “Don’t you remember I told you I was going on vacation this week?” is not something you’re likely to hear someone from FormAssembly saying. There’s no need to when you have a form customized for vacation requests and a process of putting days off directly into a shared Google calendar. This saves us from a lot of potential misunderstandings and back and forth.

• Activity Planning: Planning our team reunion was no small feat, but it could have taken way longer without the help of custom reunion planning forms. These forms let us quickly enter our activity preferences and shoot a response off, saving our awesome HR Specialist the time of having to poll each employee individually or get lost in an unproductive email thread about the reunion.

Everyone got a say in reunion activity planning with this form.

• Writing Blog Posts: We recently started a blog series highlighting members of our team (we’ll be profiling everyone eventually!) and sharing information that helps you get to know them on a more personal level. Because the questions in these employee highlights are largely the same or similar, the process translated perfectly to a web form, that gets sent by a link to each team member a few weeks before their highlight is scheduled to go out on the blog.

In addition to these examples. We also have a few handy forms designed to help us look up information faster, eliminating most of the “Where do I find that again?” questions. In short, we’re pretty keen on web forms and use our own product in multiple ways to make quick work of repetitive or time-consuming tasks.

3. Web-to-Anything Forms

We help companies drive leads, which means creating more opportunities for faster, more meaningful connections with potential customers. It’s one of our key FormAssembly uses, which is why we’re so proud of our Web-to-Lead (or, Web-to-Anything, as we call it) forms.

Here are a few examples of how we speed up our customer lifecycle with customized and connected (have you heard about our Salesforce integration?) Web-to-Anything forms.

• Our basic contact form routes information to the right channels and makes sure nothing falls in cracks.
• Pre-event forms help us plan our time at conferences like Dreamforce 2016 and set up meetings beforehand so we can get the most out of our time at these events.
• Enterprise demo forms allow potential enterprise customers to schedule demos and provide information that helps us deliver demos more tailored to their situation.
• Our Enterprise order form alerts us when an Enterprise order is placed so we can spin up an Enterprise server instance.

Our contact form gets requests and messages to the right people for faster answers and problem resolution.

See more examples here of how FormAssembly is used in every area of our company.

4. Better Communication With Smart Partnerships

Some things that seem like they should be so quick and easy just aren’t when you’re dealing with communication systems that don’t talk to each other. For some clients, including Lenovo’s Executive Briefing Center, FormAssembly helps close communication gaps and enable faster communication with key business partners.

FormAssembly used in connection Salesforce app VisitOps, provided Lenovo with a way to communicate with their non-Salesforce using business partners and speed up progress toward their mission of linking briefings and sales and being able to show the impact their program has on business.

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We bet at least one of these scenarios had you nodding your head in agreement. If one of these examples sounds familiar to you, web forms could be the answer to cutting out unnecessary lag in your day-to-day routine.

Start a free trial today and find out how FormAssembly helps accelerate business processes, reduce unnecessary work, improve communication, drive leads, and speed up your workflows.

The post 4 Ways to Accelerate Business Processes With Web Forms appeared first on The Assembly Line.

It’s a big, scary digital world out there, and attacks on your data can come from just about anywhere. Some businesses (those that deal with sensitive healthcare data or payment card information) may have more to worry about, but any business that that handles data of any kind also needs to make sure they’re doing it in a responsible, secure way.

When you invest in any form solution, you’re trusting that the company helping you collect data and transfer it from one place to another has done its own research and is just as concerned about the correct collection and processing of data as you are. In case you’re not sure what to look for in a new form solution, here are some top certifications and abilities that it should have.

1. HIPAA Compliance

HIPAA violation fines can be costly and damaging to healthcare organizations and businesses that handle PHI (Protected Health Information). Settlements for HIPAA violations can cost companies millions of dollars and can happen because of data breaches, lost or stolen equipment, and even unintentional employee mistakes.

These are serious consequences, both monetary and otherwise, even for large organizations. Not to mention the patient distrust after a breach, even if their was no mal-intent on the part of the hospital or other healthcare organization involved.

At FormAssembly, we understand the burden our healthcare clients deal with regarding the protection of sensitive information. Earlier this year, we attained HIPAA compliance, which helps keep PHI safe. Here are the benefits to healthcare organizations from our HIPAA Compliance (which is included in our Compliance Cloud offering):

• Compliance You Can Trust: We underwent a GAP assessment, in addition to further auditing by Coalfire to be able to prove our HIPAA compliance.

• Sophisticated Encryption Best Practices: Data flagged as sensitive is encrypted with private keys generated specifically for the associated user.

• Customizable, Flexible Password Protection: Our Compliance Cloud allows you to control password administration, requirements, and restrictions.

• Flexible Storage Solutions: We offer on-site installation of FormAssembly or the Compliance Cloud option, depending on your company’s needs.

• First-Class Priority: With the attentive service provided to Enterprise users, you won’t have to wonder if FormAssembly was worth the investment.

2. PCI-DSS Certification

There are lots of reasons you might use forms to collect payment information. Donation forms, payable invoices, order forms, and event signup forms are just a few examples. With any of these examples it’s important to be cognizant about PCI compliance, which affects anyone who collects payment information.

To ensure that no credit card information is unnecessarily stored in FormAssembly, we require the use of one of our approved payment connectors for any FormAssembly forms that collect payment information, but we also recently attained PCI DSS Level 1 compliance for our Enterprise-Level Compliance Cloud offering.

Over a period of more than a year, we worked with Coalfire, a third-party auditor and compliance assessor, to make the procedural changes and updates needed to obtain Level 1 certification.

3. EU-U.S. Privacy Shield Compliance

If you’re a European businesses, there are other certifications that are important for your form solution to have. We recently achieved compliance with the requirements of the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield.

In the wake of the invalidation of the Safe Harbor Framework, the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield was adopted. The EU-U.S. Privacy Shield concerns data governance between the EU the U.S., and aims for greater transparency for the data of European citizens as well as stricter measures for U.S. companies.

The EU-U.S. Privacy Shield involves:

• A greater responsibility for U.S. companies to securely handle data
• Safeguards and transparency regarding government data access
• Increased protection of European individual rights
• An annual review mechanism for companies to prove they meet EU-US. Privacy Shield Requirements
• Redress options for European individuals in the event of complaints

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Is your form builder secure and reliable? Are you sure? In this day and age, there’s no room for complacency or carelessness around data security and privacy. We take data of any sensitivity level very seriously and do our part to help you protect it. Learn more about our features and integrations and sign up for a free two-week trial today.

The post 3 Certifications Your Form Solution Should Have appeared first on The Assembly Line.

SalesWings provides lead website tracking and predictive lead scoring services for marketing and sales teams seeking to understand when leads are reaching buying readiness to increase their deal closing rate.

We all have heard the saying, “Data is the Gold of the Digital Age!” But what does that really mean?

With customer data, it is often tightly linked to an organization’s commercial and operational success. But data isn’t just “gold”, that would be too easy. Poor handling throughout the lifecycle of the data can hurt your organization’s success. But luckily, there are several solutions that can help manage your data wherever it is in its lifecycle.

The Importance of looking at Contact Data throughout its Life Cycle

Today’s CIOs at universities or executive education companies are challenged by various aspects of managing contact data.

1. Collection of Data
2. Data Storage & Security
3. Contact Analytics / Prioritization
4. Access to Data
5. Data Integrity

To name, well, just a few.

Data is dynamic as it arrives, evolves, and gets accessed throughout an organization. Read on to find a selection of interesting solutions from the Salesforce.com eco-system that will complement your CRM and data effectively.

It Starts With a Form – A Selection of Highly Effective Add-ons for Your Salesforce.com CRM

1. Data Collection

Higher education organizations receive a lot of contact data following various inbound marketing activities. Whether it is from prospective students, companies, or job candidates, you need to ensure that data gets collected efficiently and securely. FormAssembly provides a comprehensive solution for numerous use cases starting with simple contact forms to complex application processes. FormAssembly ensures a seamless data flow by sending all information directly into the Salesforce.com Sales Cloud. Furthermore, it brings powerful features to optimize the data collection such as Save & Resume for long application forms, integration of eSignature functionality, and the ability  to personalize the form’s design for your corporate identity.

2. Data Storage & Security

The time where higher education services developed their own CRM systems should be over by now, making way for cloud based solutions. Salesforce.com provides an agile and safe environment for the storage of your contact data in its Sales Cloud CRM. Hosting all sorts of data for millions of organizations, Salesforce offers a comprehensive platform that serves as a “landing and starting point” for your contact data. Salesforce not only adapts to your internal workflows, but also provides software in various other domains such as support. Furthermore, Salesforce is king when it comes to analyzing and reporting on your contact data and allows you to create useful customer segments for marketing. One of its other great advantages over other CRM systems is its large ecosystem of third-party solutions catering to the various needs your IT system and processes may have.

3. Contact Analytics

Analytics is a vast term and you may want to analyze your contact base for various reasons. When contact data comes in through your forms (such as the ones you create with FormAssembly), one of the first questions to answer is “How much of a priority is the contact to my sales team or call center?” SalesWings is a smart lead website tracking and predictive lead scoring solution that measures your contact’s activity on your website in real-time and assigns every new contact filling in a web form with a prioritization score – also known as “Lead Score”. This allows sales teams to prioritize the most engaged contacts first and leads to a very efficient sales process. Its predictive algorithm compares how contacts interact with your website, and simply puts them in three buckets: hot, warm, or cold. SalesWings is seamlessly integrated with FormAssembly and Salesforce.

4. Access to Data

Contact data in Salesforce.com needs to be accessible to your staff wherever their work happens. A lot of work today revolves around your staff’s email inbox, with Gmail and Outlook being market leaders in the space. Cirrus Insight provides a fantastic window into a contact’s Salesforce.com data, right inside Gmail or Outlook. It allows your staff to view and modify almost any contact data field right inside their inbox,which is a huge productivity gain. Furthermore, it makes sure that your staff’s email communication is automatically logged around your contact data. Lastly, a user can directly capture lead data from emails and log activities or calls, without the need to jump back and forth  to Salesforce.

5. Data Integrity

Data integrity is a growing problem for higher education organizations. Contacts are created twice, three times and more in Salesforce, creating useless duplicates. Contacts  change their addresses, jobs, and even names, which hurts the accuracy of your database While good quality data is gold, poor data quality can lead to inefficiencies for your university or executive education institution and can actually harm you. RingLead offers a perfectly integrated solution for Salesforce with priceless tools that  clean up your data and ensure its integrity over time. One simple function ensures that duplicates are not created at all. This solution merges contacts that were entered twice in the past and completes contact data with updated information from various external data sources.

In Conclusion

Today’s CIOs in higher education organizations are confronted with a large number of challenges around their contact data. Luckily, tools like FormAssembly, SalesWings, or Cirrus Insight provide excellent tools to complement your Salesforce.com CRM to help you become a pro at handling contact data throughout its lifecycle.

About the Author

The author Philip Schweizer is Partner and CEO at SalesWings, a web based solution for instant inbound lead qualification and lead scoring. He has vast know-how of the sales and marketing technology landscape and proven expert in how organizations of all sizes can leverage technology to facilitate all aspects of sales and marketing.

The post How CIOs in Higher Education Organizations Can Optimize the Handling of Contact Data Around Salesforce Throughout its Lifecycle appeared first on The Assembly Line.

Educause is just around the corner and we can’t wait! Following our appearance at the Dreamforce 2016 Conference in San Francisco we’ll be exhibiting at Booth 1864 at Educause, which will be held October 25 through 28 in Anaheim, Calif.

If you’re heading to Educause, chances are your time is going to be pretty limited while you’re there. We’d love for you to stop by our booth, but we want to make sure you know why it’s worth your while.

To help you plan out your schedule, here are a few reasons that higher education organizations choose FormAssembly and why you might want to also.

1. You Can Say Goodbye to Paper Forms …

Just because you’re an established institute of higher learning doesn’t mean you have to be held hostage by antiquated methods of collecting information. If you’re still using paper forms, ask yourself whether you could collect the same information or complete the same task with a web form. Also, consider the time, paper resources and physical storage space you’d save if you switched away from a paper form solution.

Web forms aren’t just easier for the people that have to collect information, they’re also much simpler for the people that have to fill them out. Features like Save & Resume allow people to fill out forms on their own time, and prefill options do some of the work for them by filling in certain pieces of information you already have in your database.

2. … And Long Lines

Like we mentioned above, one of the benefits of web forms is that they can be self-paced and that people can fill them out just about anywhere. That means if people currently have to wait in lines to fill out and submit forms, you can cut down or reduce this with a web form alternative.

Need an example? Here’s a perfect one. Our client Dominican University used to use a paper form process for handing out parking permits to students. The process required Dominican University to process thousands of paper forms and often required students to wait in line for over an hour.

Doesn’t sound fun or productive, does it?

Working with FormAssembly, Dominican University moved to a better solution that allows students to enter their information through a web form, which is configured to send information directly to the school’s support team.

The result? A 1.5 hour wait to submit a parking permit request was reduced to 5 minutes max. (And, perhaps more importantly, no more paper forms.)

Here’s what Adam Smeets, Director of University Information Systems, had to say about the outcome and the positive feedback they received from students:

“We’re thrilled that they’re getting the information they need in a timely fashion resulting in faster, and accurate, decisions and outcomes,” Adam said.

3. We Help You Collect Information for Just About Any Purpose…

As a university or higher education nonprofit, you have to collect a lot of different information to continue providing your students and constituents with the services they expect, whether that’s the parking permit example above, student feedback forms, alumni donation forms, student recruiting forms or many, many other examples.

Here are a few use cases from our blog archives:

• Dominican University: Teacher Assistant Applications
• Fresno Pacific University: Tutoring Center Feedback
• Higher Ed Nonprofit OneGoal: Staff Applications

4. … And Send It Wherever You Need It to Go

Collecting information is only half the battle. To make a form solution truly useful, to make the most of your data, and to stay organized, you need to be able to send information into other systems you use and make it accessible to the people that need to use it.

FormAssembly has a wide range of integrations. Our most notable and complex one is with the popular CRM Salesforce, but we have a number of other integrations that might be useful to your business:

• PayPal
• Stripe
• Google Docs
• iATS
• WordPress
• Chargent

That’s just a few of our integrations. See the full list of integrations and features here.

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Students are becoming more and more tech-savvy by the year, and they expect you to do the same. Replace outdated, inefficient paper form processes with web forms and reap the many benefits of our streamlined solution, from happier students, to savings in time and effort.

If any of these situations sound familiar to you and a FormAssembly solution sounds intriguing, stop by our booth at Educause. We can’t wait to meet you!

While you’re checking out event details on our landing page, sign up to get a T-shirt or download our useful ebook on web form design.

The post 4 Reasons Higher Education Organizations Choose FormAssembly appeared first on The Assembly Line.

We loved working with our intern Shira Beder, whose last day with us was just last week. In this post, learn more about the form design lessons she took away from her time at FormAssembly!

After eight months as an intern on FormAssembly’s marketing team, I’m pretty confident that I know more about forms than the average college student.

That’s not to say that students don’t fill out tons of forms, what with scholarship applications, job applications, course evaluations —you name it, it’s probably been in my inbox at some point.

But working at FormAssembly has helped me go beyond an outsider’s understanding and develop a heightened awareness to the minutiae of form design. Implementing best practices for design and configuration can make the difference between a user filling out a form or sending it immediately to their trash folder. From the back end, I now understand the intricacies of effective data collection and the most crucial features your forms need to have.

Here’s what I’ve learned:

Appearance Matters

Think about the most user-friendly websites you know; Airbnb, Instagram, and Warby Parker are all names that may come to mind. What do these websites have in common? They all combine simplistic, aesthetically-pleasing design with an intuitive, easy-to-navigate interface.

The same should be said for your forms. Design can make it or break it when your target respondent is deciding whether or not to fill out your form. No matter how important the information may be that you’re collecting, if your layout is cluttered, unprofessional, and hard on the eyes, it won’t take more than a few seconds for them to decide it’s not worth their time.

So how do you use design to your advantage? Combine elegant, professional colors and expertly laid-out form fields with recognizable branding elements. Make your forms consistent and give them a personality—your respondents should immediately be able to associate your forms with your company.

It’s Not About What You Ask, But How You Ask It

We all know that feeling when you open up a multi-page form and all you see is an endless amount of text. Your heart races, your palms sweat (okay, maybe not), and you can think of at least 50 other things you’d rather be doing than filling out this form.

The last thing you want is for your respondents to feel overwhelmed when they see your form. To prevent this, minimize the number of questions you ask and the number of words you use to ask them. Less is truly more in this case, and you should strive to avoid unnecessary filler content in your form design. Think about what you’re really trying to achieve by having someone fill out a particular form and then craft your questions around this goal. Taking a straightforward and organized approach to asking questions is key. The less time it takes your respondent to understand and fill out your form, the higher quality your responses will be.

Also, use conditional logic to your benefit (but first make sure the form software you’re using has this feature, so you don’t have to deal with any complicated coding).

Here’s an example: let’s say you’ve created a job application form that lists multiple open positions. Rather than having all the application information for every position visible to the respondent, you can use conditional logic to show only the relevant fields once the respondent has selected which position they’re applying for. This makes the experience easier for your users and could increase form submission rates.

Another important thing to keep in mind is making the form experience personal. Decide who your target respondent is and then tailor the form. Be conversational in your questions—your forms can have a distinct voice.

Don’t underestimate the power of incentives, either. People are much more likely to give you their feedback when they know they’ll get a gift card or some other reward in return.

Forms Should Make Lives Easier, Not Harder

Congratulations, you’ve designed an awesome form and your audience is responding!

Now, what do you do with all this data? Making your form pretty and organized is a very small part of the data collection process. Once you have this information, you need to be able to store it in a centralized location that’s secure, accessible, and easy to update.

Form solutions with a Salesforce integration allow you to connect form fields with individual records and keep information up-to-date and organized. This creates a streamlined customer management system and mitigates the risk of losing any important data.

Maintaining Data Integrity is Always Priority #1

One of my most surprising lessons about forms was the element of trust that comes into play. It should come as no surprise that data breaches are a regular occurrence with modern technology.

For this reason, it’s understandable that users may be hesitant to submit their information in a digital form, especially when the information is particularly sensitive, such as payment or medical information. With this in mind, it’s important to be extra selective when choosing a form builder. You want to be able to promise your respondents that their information won’t fall into the wrong hands, that the highest level of security is enforced at all times, and that the software you use has all the appropriate certifications.

Placing a high priority on data integrity is a win-win for both the respondent and the organization collecting data. Your respondents will feel more comfortable filling out your forms and you’ll likely receive more responses as a result.

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If you’ve got any web form design lessons you want to share, be sure to comment below or tweet us @formassembly!

And if our software sounds like it may be exactly what your organization is looking for, head to our website to check out our different offerings.

The post What Interning at FormAssembly Taught Me About Web Form Design appeared first on The Assembly Line.

Do you receive support requests through a Salesforce Web-to-Case form on your site? Have you been looking for a way to send file attachments from these forms to Salesforce?

FormAssembly allows you to send attachments to Salesforce from your Web-to-Case forms, and we offer all the support you need to get your forms set up to start collecting customer submissions. Learn more about why FormAssembly is an easy, hassle-free option for Web-to-Case forms and attachments.

Using Web-to-Case Forms As Part of Your Customer Service Offering

Offering Web-to-Case forms for support questions allows people more opportunities to contact you in the way that works best for them. It also helps ensure that nothing falls through the cracks.

Many organizations have a support team and need to manage requests for assistance from customers. Companies in industries such as SaaS, finance, and healthcare must have a reliable way to organize incoming support conversations and track them from start to finish. Without an effective system in place, you risk missing customer requests, frustrating your clients, or not being able to provide satisfactory support because you don’t have enough information.

Our own small-but-mighty group of FormAssembly support wizards uses a variety of ways to connect with customers, and we often get support questions and requests through our in-app chat feature, email, our website forms, or even on Twitter.

Here are a few reasons why you should use FormAssembly to handle your Web-to-Case forms:

1. Easily Add Attachments

Many Salesforce users need to be able to upload attachments in Web-to-Case forms, and at the moment there’s no way of doing that through Salesforce’s Web-to-Case functionality.

But there’s a simple way with FormAssembly. Using our Salesforce Connector, you can allow users to easily upload attachments to Web-to-Case forms and instantly send the attachments to Salesforce.

Through FormAssembly, you can receive user screenshots of an issue that can help your support team provide resolutions faster and help you keep track of all the support conversations that come in through your website. Setting up a Web-to-Case form that can process attachments is simple with our Salesforce integration and ample documentation.

Check out our documentation onFile Uploads and Salesforce Attachments for more information, and contact our support team with any questions!

2. Style Your Forms to Match Your Branding

Salesforce forms get the job done, but they’re not always the most pleasing to look at. It might seem inconsequential, but great design matters, whether it’s your web forms or marketing collateral. Even simple support and contact forms are a reflection of your brand.

Design can have a powerful effect on mood. If you can control the look and feel of your forms and make design decisions that create positive experiences for people instead of confusing them, why wouldn’t you choose to do that on your support forms?

With FormAssembly’s powerful customization and design features in the Form Builder, you can create forms that are not only easy to use, but that look great, too — and craft a user-friendly experience from top to bottom.

3. Create New Records or Update Existing Salesforce Records

FormAssembly’s Salesforce Connector allows you to create new records in Salesforce even for custom objects. Not only than, but we also allow you to update records that already exist in Salesforce based on new information submitted through your forms. Our Salesforce Connector does this by first looking up a record to see if it exists in Salesforce, then using new information to update that record.

The best part is that you can create and update records in Salesforce without any manual data entry. This level of automation does much of the data collection work for you, allowing you to focus on helping your customers and resolving their issues.

4. Get Individualized Support 12 Hours a Day, 5 Days a Week

FormAssembly allows you to do much more than send attachments with Web-to-Case forms. Our Salesforce integration enables you to look up existing records, create new records conditionally, create tasks, and so much more. But while all of this functionality is great to have, it can be a little overwhelming to learn everything all at once, especially if you’re just starting out as a FormAssembly customer.

We get that, and that’s why we offer so many different ways to get support, whether you’re the kind of person that likes to talk through an issue with someone or whether you’d prefer to figure things out on your own with the help of documentation or videos.  We recently expanded our support hours to 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Friday (with limited support on weekends and holidays). You can talk to a knowledgeable, friendly support representative any time during those hours, but in a way, our support is really a 24-7 thing. With our extensive documentation and training videos, it’s possible to find answers to your questions just about any time of the day or night.

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If you already have a FormAssembly account, contact our support team for help setting up Web-to-Case forms. If you don’t have an account yet, why wait any longer? Check out our plans and sign up for a free trial today.

The post 4 Reasons to Use FormAssembly for Salesforce Web-to-Case Forms appeared first on The Assembly Line.

Maybe you’ve never created a form in your life and you’re not sure where to start; maybe you’re a pro at form building. Or, maybe you’re somewhere in between. Whichever describes you, it’s always a good idea to refresh yourself on the basic tenets of building forms every once in awhile.

In this post, we’ll go back to the basics of form building and cover all the most important aspects of creating a form that hits all your goals and knocks it out of the park in terms of form usability and design.

Follow best practices and pay attention to all the important aspects of form creation, whether you’re creating your first form or your 101st form.

Template or From Scratch?

In the form builder tool you use, there will likely be several options for how to create a form. If yours is a pretty common type of form (contact forms or order forms for example), you might be able to get away with using a template instead of making a form from scratch. If you know that you’ll solely be using Salesforce fields and will only need to send information directly to Salesforce (in the case of a web-to-lead form) try using our Salesforce Import Tool that lets you create simple forms based on Salesforce fields.

Use the FormAssembly Salesforce Import Tool to quickly create a form.

Constructing the Body of Your Form

Whatever the purpose of your form, one of the most important things to remain cognizant of  is that you’re using the right field type for each question. Here are a few common field types that we support in our form builder.

Question Types

• Text Entry: Best for short-answer questions and pieces of information like name and email address.
• Text Area: Best for essays or long-answer questions. Be careful with these! Too many large text boxes can be taxing on the user
• Checkboxes and Radio Buttons: Some people confuse these two question types, but here’s the main difference: Multiple checkboxes support one or more selections from a group of options, whereas radio buttons support only one selection. Single checkboxes (think: email opt outs) represent yes/no questions.
• Lists and Menus: Use lists and menus when presenting all the options in checkbox or radio button form would clutter the form. Be selective about when you use this question type though, because it can add unnecessary clicks for the user.
• Attachments: Use these if you want your users to be able to upload a document such as a resume, cover letter, screenshot of a support issue, etc.

Choose from a variety of question types when building your form.

Amount of Questions

In addition to choosing the right field types, remember to err on the side of including fewer fields. You should aim to use just enough fields to get the information that you absolutely need but not so many that you annoy your audience or make them wonder why you’re asking for certain pieces of information.

Making it Easier on Yourself and Your Users

You’re probably familiar with the idea of User Experience (UX) design. While this practice mainly benefits the user, it can also make your job simpler by reducing the amount of user mistakes that can arise when users don’t totally understanding what you’re asking for on a form or the proper format to put it in. The following elements in forms can reduce effort for you and your users.

1. Hints and Placeholder Text

It’s pretty common to see placeholder text designating what should be entered into a certain field (Name, Email Address, etc.). This practice can help guide your users through a form, but it might not be the best choice for less standard questions. According the Nielsen Norman Group, placeholder text can actually work against you if it disappears when your users click on a field, causing them to forget what was supposed to go in a field. Hints, popup boxes showing how to fill out a field, are another option to reduce confusion on the part of your users.

2. Validations and Limits

If you want users to enter their information in a specific format (using the XXX-XXX-XXXX format for a phone number for example) a validation can help make sure you get information in that state. You can also set a limit on the amounts that your users can enter in a certain field. These are just a few examples of controls you can place on your forms to standardize the data you receive.

3. Break long forms into multiple pages

With paper forms, you may want to use as few pieces of paper as possible, which often requires cramming multiple fields onto one page. With web forms, you don’t have the same space restrictions. It’s actually beneficial for your users if you break up overly long forms into a few pages to reduce the burden of endlessly scrolling and filling out a long form.

4. Use conditional fields to streamline the process for users

Do your users need to fill out every field on your forms? If some questions are optional based on user’s previous answers, include conditional fields so the questions only appear in certain cases. This makes forms shorter and eliminates unnecessary fields.

5. Make form fields long enough for the expected input

A mistake people sometimes make with their forms is not making the fields long enough for the information people will be most likely to enter. This makes for a clunky user experience. Resize your text boxes or change them into text areas if needed; just make sure your user has plenty of space for their answers.

Make sure your form fields are long enough for your users’ answers.

You don’t have to be a trained designer to produce great looking forms, but design is an important consideration even for web form beginners. Here are some basic tips for designing your forms:

• Include ample white space in your forms
• Use the same fonts, colors and images as your overall company branding
• Stick to one-column layouts
• Make forms attractive and easy to understand and fill out

In addition to these, FormAssembly has many different options for ways that you can improve the look of your forms:

1. Add Images and Text

People respond well to visual information, and retain more of it then they do written information. A well-chosen picture can add a lot to your form, and it’s easy to do in the FormAssembly form builder.

Easily add images to your forms.

2. Use Preset Themes

If your form is a pretty common one, like a donation form, contact form or Stripe/Paypal payment form, you might want to start out with a premade template. This gives you a strong form framework that you can build on and customize to meet your needs.

Start with a prebuilt theme to speed up the form building process.

3. Insert Custom CSS

If you’re a CSS whiz, the sky’s the limit for what you can create with your forms. You also have the option to style your forms in the Theme Editor, but there’s a lot you can do with Custom CSS in the Form Builder itself. If, for example, you wanted to change the color of the submit button from the default gray, you could easily do that with custom code.

See the GIF below for how to enter custom code, and here’s the actual code if you’d like to try it on your own forms:

 <style type="text/css">
.wForm input[type=button], .wForm input[type=submit] {
    background-color: #43bae1;
}
</style>

Follow these steps to make a quick button color change.

This post was inspired by our recent class on Form Building 101. You can watch the video of the class or sign up for our next class on Form Building 201, which will be held December 14.

The post Form Building 101: Content, Usability, Design appeared first on The Assembly Line.

Bias can sneak up in the most unexpected ways. Everyone has their individual preferences and opinions, and  as much as we might not want them to, those can leak into our professional lives. Poorly constructed survey questions are an example of how personal bias can leak into our work, causing us to create questions that reflect a bias in some way.

What we’re talking about here is leading and loaded questions. If you’re not aware of your biases when you’re creating forms, these questions could sneak into your surveys and influence your users into filling out answers that don’t accurately reflect their belief. Tainted, half-true data isn’t helpful for you or the people you’re sharing it with.

Leading vs. Loaded Questions

What exactly are leading and loaded questions? There are several definitions and different understandings of these questions, but here’s one way to understand the difference between the two.

Leading questions are intended to lead people to answer questions in a specific way based on how they’re phrased. Often they contain information that they want confirmed rather than a question that tries to get at the true answer.

Here’s a real-life example of a leading question. In a 1970 Virginia Slims poll, people were surveyed on their thoughts about women in leadership, including this question:

“There won’t be a woman President of the United States for a long time and that’s probably just as well.”

It’s very clear how the survey creators intended this question to be answered. In addition to being leading, this question is flawed in other ways, too. This question really contains two questions, each of which could have a different answer from the same person. For example, someone could agree that there wouldn’t be a female president for a while, but not agree that it was for the best. The construction of the question forces respondents to answer yes to both statements or no to both statements.

Another of a leading question could be asking form respondents something like “Do you love our amazing support team?” With this kind of phrasing, it feels harsh to answer anything other than yes. Instead, ask something along the lines of “How would you rate the performance of our support team on a scale of 1 to 10?”

Loaded questions are similar to leading questions in that they subtly (or not so subtly) push the user toward a particular response. The defining feature of this question type is the assumption about the respondent that is included implicitly in the question.

Loaded questions can seem pretty benign at a first glance. Robin Pearl of Estee Lauder noted in a 2008 Marketing Research Association conference talk that questions beginning with the query “What do you love about…” can be problematic. (Note: The source article for this question calls it leading question, but we would call it a loaded question because of the assumptions it makes about the person you’re asking it of.)

This question could be asked about a lot of things: a product, a person, a business. The problem with it is that it assumes that your user loves whatever you’re asking them about. Maybe all you’re looking for in these cases is positive answers, but if you want honest feedback, this might not be the best way to phrase this question.

Leading and loaded questions have small differences, but it’s important to remember that they are both ways of confusing, misleading, or trying to influence users into making a particular selection. Sometimes they’re created deliberately, other times they’re unconscious. In nearly all cases, it’s possible to modify them to present better options to users and get more accurate results in return.

Words to Avoid

Sometimes the problem with a question is that it contains loaded words: words overcharged with negative or positive emotion or words that imply a bias toward the question. Using absolute words, according to FluidSurveys, puts your users in a difficult position, forcing them to think in black and white terms. Likewise, using strong, emotionally charged verbs and adjectives can influence the way your users think about an issue.

How to Avoid Flawed, Biased Questions in Your Forms

When you’re creating forms of any type, take these steps to make sure you’re not using leading or loaded questions and that you’re respecting the intelligence of your users.

1. Look at your questions and ask yourself if there’s a particular way you want a question to be answered or if there’s a certain type of response you’re expecting.

Solution: Re-word questions to focus on all options; don’t just ask readers to confirm something you believe to be true.

2. Look at the words you’re using. Are you describing something in a biased way?

Solution: Remove biased language and describe options using clear, to-the-point phrasing. Don’t suggest in any way that one response is better than another.

3. Examine whether the questions you’re asking require users to give an answer that doesn’t completely represent their response.

Solution: Separate out any grouped questions and clarify any user characteristics before you make an assumption within a question.

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There are lots of ethical issues related to form building and we’re aiming to explore as many as we can in our form ethics series. Read the previous post in this series, or connect with us on Twitter to let us know what other topics you’d like to learn more about!

The post Leading and Loaded Questions: How to Avoid Telling Your Users What to Think appeared first on The Assembly Line.

We’ve all been there.

You’re browsing a website and enjoying the content, when all of a sudden, your screen is obscured by a popup asking you to sign up for something, buy something or enter your email address.

The popup hints, not so subtly, that you’re somehow not as smart if you decline to do whatever it’s asking. But really, you just want to get back to the page you were on and then make up your own mind about whether signing up or buying is really worth it.

It can be hard to get an audience’s attention, and popups can be a way to keep people on your site long enough to convince them to purchase or take the next steps toward purchasing. But there are a lot of people that are vehemently opposed to them.

Let’s take the emotion out of this issue, because really, it’s about results, not opinions. Do popups work or are people so sick of them that they’re one popup away from leaving your website for good? Keep reading for our take on the issue.

Bad Practice?

Traditional digital advertising tactics such as large banner ads and popup ads are widely considered to be nuisances to many people. In fact, people named “too many ads” as their top reason for blocking websites in a SurveyMonkey survey, reported by Search Engine Land.

Once referred to as one of “the most hated advertising experiences” by web design and usability experts the Nielsen Norman Group, popup ads are, as most people would agree, one of the most annoying things you can experience. (The Nielsen Norman Group points out in the article above that companies should steer clear of any kind of popup, not just ads.)

While many people don’t enjoy any kind of popup that makes it harder to interact with websites, annoying and effective are two different aspects of popups that can be mutually exclusive.

Best Practice?

So, here’s the thing: popup forms are actually effective. Very effective. According to research from Aweber, popup email opt-in forms are over 1,300% more effective that email opt-in forms located in the sidebar of the site.

It might be more aggressive than letting your audience find the CTA themselves, but popup forms really do drive conversions by making it clear how you want your users to take action and putting the ability to do so right in front of their faces.

The Verdict

We say that popup forms aren’t really unethical, but they should be used very carefully, just like pretty much any digital marketing or advertising tactic. Use them too much or without finesse, and you risk turning off your audience and potential customers.

Note: Google announced that on January 10, 2017, sites using popups that detract from the mobile experience, or, “intrusive interstitials,” may see their mobile ranking get worse. However, the only popups Google will be considering are the ones that appear on the first page someone visits after clicking through a Google search result link to a website, as reported here by Search Engine Journal. Because of this, extra attention will need to be paid to the mobile experience and any ads that Google deems intrusive.

However, when used responsibly and in moderation, popup forms can offer a great opportunity to convert website visitors. The trick is finding the healthy balance between using them too much and not at all, and making sure that your popups don’t compromise the mobile viewing experience (or alternately just removing popups from the mobile view of your site).

Tips for Making Them Work

Here are our recommendations for creating popup forms that are effective without being annoying.

1. Be careful about when you choose to display your popup forms

Give people time to read and absorb your content before throwing a popup form or window in front of their faces. If people took the time to visit one of your blog posts or landing pages, they probably have an interest in your content. Let them experience it and start forming opinions about it so they’ll be more primed to take action when presented with a call to action.

2. Don’t patronize or subtly demean your audience

There’s nothing wrong with making your desired course of action sound more inviting to your audience, but be careful about how you word the alternative to it. Some companies go a little too far in making the opt out sound like a bad or downright dumb decision. Don’t turn off your audience by talking down to them or insulting them. That way you’ll have a better chance of converting them next time around.

The example below is of a full-screen popup ad from Convince & Convert. Note that the text on the decline button is worded in such a way that it doesn’t demean or insult the reader. (In light of the change to mobile search rankings mentioned above, you should consider disabling large popups for the mobile version of your site beyond early 2017, especially if a large percentage of your traffic comes from mobile users.)

3. Don’t make it too difficult to close the popup

Likewise, respect people’s decisions if they choose not to sign up, buy, subscribe, etc. You’ve probably seen popup forms with impossibly tiny exit buttons, which can be frustrating for your users. Make it easy for people to close the popup form if that’s what they want to do.

This email signup example from Contently’s blog is well-designed and minimal with a clear way to close it if you’re not interested.

4. Don’t give a weak offer

When people get interrupted, they generally want the interruption to be worth it. If your CTA isn’t strong and compelling, why did you have to bother them in the first place?

This example from Canva’s Design School Blog provides a clear and persuasive message with the added edge of being well-designed. (As a design tool, Canva wouldn’t be able to get away with anything less than sleek and polished ads.)

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Do you use popup forms on your website? How well do they perform and have you discovered anything about what makes them most effective? Let us know in the comments below or share your thoughts with us on Twitter.

If you’re interested in exploring other ethical issues related to forms, read our previous posts on the subject.

The post Popup Forms: Bad Practice or Best Practice? appeared first on The Assembly Line.

Salesforce, Paypal, and the many other FormAssembly integrations are a key part of what makes us such a useful form solution. Today, we’re highlighting one of our great payment-related connectors that helps simplify the often complicated process of billing.

Chargent, a tool by AppFrontier, is a Salesforce-embedded billing system that connects to 25 popular payment connectors. Mutual customers of FormAssembly and Chargent use the two systems together to handle payments such as donations and orders and easily transfer information into Salesforce.  

The main goal of Chargent, which was acquired in 2012 by AppFrontier, is to make billing, especially subscription or recurring payments, easier.

“I’d worked in a lot of internet service companies in the past, and billing has always been a real problem,” said David Hecht, founder of AppFrontier and long-time participant in the Salesforce community. “Billing systems are complicated and difficult to manage.”

Usually, billing and invoicing systems live outside of Salesforce and don’t allow companies a lot of visibility or control. With Chargent, billing is seamlessly connected to Salesforce, simplifying the job of taking and processing payments.

Simplifying Recurring and Subscription Billing

Chargent is most popular among Salesforce customers who use it to bill subscription or recurring payments, which can become complicated once subscriptions reach a certain volume.

“Where it really becomes a challenge to manage is when you have multiple customers, charging every month,” Hecht said. “Managing that is not something that can really be done manually without a lot of errors.”

100% Native to Salesforce

Many businesses rely on Salesforce as the main location for storing customer data. Because Chargent is native to this widely used CRM, that makes it possible for companies to combine their use of Chargent with Salesforce features like email templates and reporting.

Additionally, Salesforce cases and opportunities can be used in conjunction with Chargent to take payments directly in Salesforce.

25 Different Payment Tool Integrations

Chargent boasts the largest number of integrations with payment solutions out of any billing tool. Some of their connectors include:

• Stripe
• Authorize.net
• Merchant e-solutions
• CyberSource
• eWAY

Whatever connector a business is using, it’s likely they can find a way to connect it to Chargent.

“We try to make it easy for customers to keep whatever payment integrations they’ve got,” Hecht said.

Streamlines Customer Service

Chargent helps take the hassle out of billing and improve the customer service companies are able to offer. It’s also possible to process refunds through Chargent and complete transactions over the phone, making Chargent perfect for use in call centers.

Chargent also helps eliminate payment issues by showing the results of a payment up front. Transactions and other payment information such as declines are easy to see in Salesforce, providing a whole picture of a customer from a billing standpoint.

FormAssembly-Chargent Connector

The FormAssembly-Chargent connector allows payments to be posted to Salesforce through forms. In addition to being simple to implement, FormAssembly doesn’t require advanced design or web development skills.

“We were pretty excited when FormAssembly came out with the connector for Chargent. Web forms can be complicated, and FormAssembly definitely takes care of that in a nice way,” Hecht said. “Something like FormAssembly allows people to quickly put something into place that works well.”

Lots of customers need to create forms to process transactions, Hecht said, but getting good forms that work correctly isn’t always easy.

“It’s nice to be able to give customers a quick solution to a problem that a lot of people have.”

Getting Started With Chargent + FormAssembly

Could you use Chargent for your business? Here’s a quick guide to setting up the connector to FormAssembly.

1. Salesforce Authentication

With your Salesforce username, password and security token, you can link your FormAssembly account to Salesforce, if your accounts aren’t already connected.

2. Chargent Configuration

Connecting Chargent simply requires a few details like which payment gateway you want to connect (based on what company is processing the payment) as well as how payments will be collected and the currency they will be received in. If you’re interested in testing Chargent out before buying, they offer a 30-day free trial.

3. Credit Card Information

After setting up connections to Salesforce and Chargent, you’ll need to configure the connector on the FormAssembly side by mapping the fields that collect payment details to give the connector instructions on how to transfer this information.

4. Billing Details & 5. Shipping Details

Just like you mapped credit card information above, you’ll also map fields related to the billing and shipping addresses.

6. Charge Information

As we mentioned above, Chargent works well for one-time or recurring charges. This step is where you’ll set that up.

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Thanks to AppFrontier for sharing information on Chargent and the many benefits of this billing tool! You can read more about the connector in our documentation. If you don’t yet have a FormAssembly account, sign up for a free 14-day trial and take it for a test spin.

The post Partner Highlight: Chargent, from AppFrontier appeared first on The Assembly Line.

WARNING: If you haven’t read the Ponemon Institute’s recent “Fourth Annual Study: Is Your Company Ready for a Big Data Breach?” sponsored by Experian, this information may be a bit of a shock to you.
More businesses than ever have a response plan for data breaches, but there are still signs showing that businesses aren’t properly prepared for an attack on their data. Here are some of the numbers from the Ponemon Institute study:

• Almost a third of businesses (29 percent) haven’t looked back at their data breach plan since implementing it.
• More than half (57 percent) companies say that executives and other senior-level employees aren’t involved with activities related to data breach preparedness.
• Less than half (41 percent) of responding businesses were confident that they’d be able to handle a breach that encompassed “business confidential information and intellectual property.”

If data breaches were an infrequent occurrence within only select industries, this might be more understandable. But this isn’t the case. Data breaches can happen at any time, to any kind of business. Don’t be one of the businesses that’s caught by surprise with a breach of any magnitude.

1. Understand the Risk and Consequences of a Breach

It’s mistake to underestimate how likely a breach is for your company and how disastrous the effects could be. Even if you’re a small business, even if you think your data would be of no interest to hackers, you are still at risk for a breach.

If, or rather, when a breach occurs, there are many anecdotes giving you an idea of how disastrous the consequences could be. Since 2005, when data breaches became a serious issue, millions of records have been exposed and thousands of breaches have occurred. High-profile data breaches in the past half-decade, to name just a few, have included:

• Target: The huge Target breach of 2013 is still fresh in many people’s minds because of its effect on millions of Target shoppers’ payment card information.
• Anthem: In early 2015, Anthem experienced a breach of nearly 80 million  customer records. This attack was especially disastrous because of the medical nature of the information stolen.
• Department of Homeland Security: Not even the government is safe from data breaches. In February 2016, hackers obtained and published thousands of employee information records, including some 20,000 FBI employees and 9,000 DHS employees online.
• Ebay: Information on more than 145 billion ebay customers, including addresses and login details, was leaked in 2014. Because financial information was kept safe from this attack, it was not as disastrous as it could have been.

All these attacks were of varying severity and cost, but the estimated average cost of a data breach is about $4 million dollars, according to IBM and the Ponemon Institute’s 2016 Cost of Data Breach Study: United States.

2. Involve Multiple Stakeholders in the Breach Management Plan

It needs to be clear who is in charge of what, long before a breach ever happens. Having designated roles and leaders will aid the execution of any data response team. It’s also been shown that the costs of a data breach decrease when a security leader is put in place. When a whole team is ready to respond to an attack, costs decrease even further, according to the 2016 Cost of a Data Breach Study from the Ponemon Institute and IBM.

3. Plan How You’ll Respond to the Public

Following the 2013 Target data breach, Target issued a series of press releases about the incident. The releases included a formal apology, information for how to contact Target about individual questions related to the breach, and facts and updates about the breach.

After any company crisis, whether it’s a data breach or a social media scandal, it’s key to take control of the situation from a communication aspect as early as possible. (Though it’s also key to take the time to formulate a measured and thought-out response.) Silence on the part of your company after a breach can make you look negligent or ambivalent about the situation.

Involve PR and customer service in your data breach planning so you know how to communicate an issue to your customers en masse and individually.

4. Prepare for Any Kind of Potential Breach

Because breaches can come from many places, it’s important to be prepared for every eventuality. A common, yet unpredictable source of breaches is your employees. That’s why training on best practices for security should be enforced for all teams and workers, even those not involved in the data breach management team.

5. Regularly Practice & Update Your Plan as Needed

As we mentioned at the very beginning of this article, 29 percent of businesses reported not looking back at their data breach plan after they’d created it.

You can’t reasonably expect even the best data breach response team to pull off a crisis plan without a hitch if they haven’t practiced. Experian recommends doing a large test of your response protocol once a year, at a minimum, in addition to smaller, more frequent tests. Taking the time to prepare for a breach can pay off in the long run by reducing the cost related to a breach, according to a SANS Institute Report referenced by CSO Online.

6. If a Breach Happens, Understand Why and How You Can Prevent Further Issues

A breach may be costly, bad for business and embarrassing, but it’s possible to learn from an incident so you avoid making the same mistakes again. Though breaches can be a learning tool, you don’t have to wait until a data breach happens to learn from the mistakes of other large companies.

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You may not be able to predict when or how it will happen, but it’s not unlikely that your company will experience a breach at one time or another. Being proactive and creating a plan that you rehearse and keep updated is one of the best ways to not be taken by surprise when a breach occurs.

Looking for a data collection solution that prioritizes security? Learn more about our Enterprise and Compliance Cloud plans.

The post 6 Things You Can Do to Be Better Prepared for a Data Breach (Or Reduce the Likelihood of One) appeared first on The Assembly Line.

Can we just be real for a minute? Let’s talk about an issue that a lot of online retailers have: shopping cart abandonment.

Shopping cart abandonment, in the digital world, means that people spent time browsing your online store, picked out a few items, made it to the checkout page, but never completed the transaction.

Pretty frustrating, right? You were so close to making a sale, but it didn’t happen. Just like being one digit off from the winning lottery number, “almost” doesn’t mean you achieved your goals. Instead, you have to figure out what it is that’s turning people off from your website and causing them to jump ship at the last moment.

The good thing (but also a bad thing) is that this is a pretty common phenomenon, which means there’s a lot of research into why people are leaving websites without buying and what parts of the checkout process could be optimized to make them stay.

Insight Into Shopping Cart Abandonment

Shopping cart abandonment isn’t just caused by one thing. It’s not even caused by just a few things. There are multiple different interlocking factors that cause people to either complete a purchase or just stick to window shopping. Before you can do anything to fix a shopping cart abandonment problem, you have to understand why it’s happening.

Let’s go over a few recent insights on what influences users to buy online (or not).

According to VWO research, there are a few things in particular that really turn people off from making an online purchase. As you can see below in this graph from VWO, nearly half of the reasons have to do with money, most notably, shipping costs.

A lot of the reasons are also related to elements of a site that complicate the order process, including a difficult checkout experience, website security doubts, and required account creation. Another large percent of users simply didn’t buy because they never intended to.

Image Credit: VWO, 2016

Another set of statistics from VWO digs deeper into what people consider the most frustrating elements of the checkout process:

Image Credit: VWO, 2016

These numbers shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone who knows anything about web design. Asking your users to enter information multiple times or fill out extraneous form fields is frustrating for them and so easily avoided.

Business2Community’s roundup of expert advice on shopping cart abandonment includes several insights into what you might be doing wrong on order forms and how you can fix it:

The common thread that runs through these comments and through many of the statistics you’ll find on this topic is that users hate anything that makes it harder for them to achieve their objective, whether that’s just window shopping or making a purchase.

What you should strive for across the board, whether it’s something you can do with forms or otherwise, is a reduction of friction.

Reducing Friction

We’ve mentioned friction a few times in this blog post, but what exactly is it? Quick Sprout offers an excellent definition in this infographic:

Friction can be caused by annoyingly long and complicated forms, hesitation about price or security issues, and any other web design hurdles that come up during the checkout process (like needing to create an account before you can buy).

So, What Part Do Forms Play Anyways?

Form design can be simple or confusing. It can reduce friction or add friction to the user experience. Though it’s not the only thing that trips users up in the checkout process, it’s still a factor, and one that you can control. Having insight into what users dislike most about the checkout process (duplication of information, too many form fields) gives you insight into what elements of your forms might be annoying your visitors.

While you can and should implement changes like account-free purchases and transparent shipping costs, there are specific changes you can make to your forms to ward off shopping cart abandonment. Here are five tips to make your forms easier to fill out and reduce friction across the order process.

1. Prefilling

No one likes repeating themselves, not in conversations, not in forms. While users can enable form fill settings on their own devices, you can help them along in this part of the order form with prefilling capabilities that re-enter information from one part of a form to another.

2. Multiple Pages

What’s easier to fill out? One looooong form or 5 micro forms that take just seconds each. (We’d pick the latter.) Give your users a breather if you have a lot of information you need to collect by breaking a form up into multiple pages and allowing easy navigation between pages.

3. Reduce Unnecessary Form Fields

If you can, cut out any form fields you don’t need. Make it as simple as possible to make a purchase and don’t ask for any information that’s not relevant.

4. Include Security Logos on Forms

Your users are worried about security on your site. Don’t take it personally, just do what you need to do to calm their fears. Let your users know that shopping on your site is safe in the form of security seals and verbiage that talks about your commitment to security.

5. Offer Multiple Ways to Pay

Many people choose to use PayPal to make online purchases these days. Giving your users the option of how they pay is a smart choice.

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A form isn’t just a way of collecting information. It’s a hurdle your customers have to cross to take a certain action, like buying or signing up. Even if you don’t see your forms as difficult to complete, your users might still view them as a hassle, which could increase friction and negatively affect your conversions and sales. Put these tips in place for your own order forms or donation forms, and let us know how they work for you!

Don’t have a form solution yet? Check out our plans and features here.

The post Shopping Cart Abandonment and What It Has to Do With Web Forms appeared first on The Assembly Line.

Savvy salespeople have known for a while that the tables have turned and that buyers now control the sales process. From conducting research independently to demanding timely, personalized sales and marketing content in the later stages of the buyer journey, buyers haven’t just turned the sales funnel on its head; they’ve changed the definition of success for sales teams.

These shifts are pushing sales teams to seek and use new types of solutions that provide valuable prospect and customer insights throughout the buyer journey. But sales leaders are learning that the earlier salespeople can gain visibility into buyer behavior, the more likely they are to build better, more meaningful customer experiences.

Using Data

Critical data can be derived from every single touchpoint throughout the buyer journey. The real challenge, however, is enabling salespeople to access and interpret early-stage data. Solutions that provide data on how often a prospect views top-of-funnel sales and marketing content, which types of content they prefer to consume, and the devices they use to view that content can offer valuable clues to salespeople on how to guide buyers toward the next stages of the buyer journey. A salesperson who knows, for instance, that a buyer prefers to read shorter product content on a mobile device can personalize documents like proposals more quickly and easily.

Making Connections

Data has the potential to be powerful, but only if salespeople know what to do with it. Because 94 percent of B2B buyers conduct online research at some point in the buying process, it’s critical that once salespeople determine how to personalize the content they deliver, they also use it to connect with prospects and address their pain points.

Personalization is just the first part of enabling the buyer journey; it’s up to salespeople to demonstrate they can solve a buyer’s problem, and to develop meaningful dialogue that leads to later stages in the sales process. According to HubSpot, one of the three most important salesperson behavioral traits is knowledge–of a prospect’s needs, as well as their own product and its ability to solve problems.

Closing Business

Speed is of the essence for salespeople: delivering the right content quickly and being available to answer prospect questions can make the difference between closing a deal and losing to a competitor. It’s here that early visibility can make the most impact, and not just with a single buyer. Sales teams that use analytics to build accurate forecasting can use that same data to determine how certain types of buyers will behave. And when salespeople have access to that data early in the sales cycle, they can help set a path for buyers that leads to them becoming customers.

The amount of information sales teams can learn about prospects is growing, and that means the need to gain prospect visibility at the start of the buyer journey is more important than ever. Salespeople armed with the tools and insight to help prospects make the right decisions will close better deals and retain better customers.

Sharmin Kent

Sharmin Kent is the Content and Communications Manager for Octiv.

The post How Early Visibility Can Improve the Buyer Journey appeared first on The Assembly Line.

Over the past few months, we’ve been talking a lot on the the blog about how you can use the features of FormAssembly’s Salesforce Submit and Prefill connectors to act as a seamless replacement for Salesforce Stay-In-Touch, which is scheduled for retirement in June 2017.

You might’ve noticed that we’ve covered a lot of potential use cases that don’t exactly count as staying-in-touch, but that’s just to show you how much you can do with FormAssembly. Yes, you can stay in touch, but you can also improve communication during the onboarding process by sending prefilled forms and much more.

Think there can’t possibly be any more ways that FormAssembly can help you connect with your customers and drive business? Think again.

In the rest of this article, we’ll share a few more ways you can use FormAssembly’s prefill abilities and Salesforce connector to help assist your communication with customers, wherever they are in the lifecycle.

Engage With Customers Early on in the Relationship

It happened! Your marketing and sales efforts paid off and you gained a new customer. In Salesforce, that means you’ll be converting leads into accounts, contacts and opportunities. Once you’ve changed the status of your leads, it’s important to stay in contact with them.

Sending prefilled forms to customers early in the relationship with the information you already have on a prospect cuts down on the work they have to do. It also keeps your Salesforce records clean and allows you to build on your existing records.

Whether it’s to follow up on a recent purchase, or walk new clients through your onboarding process, a prefilled form can help you provide your customers with a personalized, simple experience and allow you to gather any contact information changes along the way.

Send Surveys to Your Contacts to Enrich the Relationship

No business is perfect, and one of the best ways to improve is to get real-life feedback directly from your customers or partners. These stakeholders likely have plenty of opinions and thoughts on how you could make your services and products more attractive, and asking them shows them how important they are to your business.

Ok, you’re thinking, but nobody really fills out surveys, right? That’s not entirely true. While some people may never fill out your surveys no matter how many follow-up emails you send or incentives you offer, you can still gather valuable insight from just a small percentage of your survey pool.

And, you can increase the chances that people will fill out your surveys if you create forms that aren’t a chore to fill out. Prefilling information for your contacts is just one way to speed up the process.

Here’s an example from our own sales team of how we just prefilling and the Salesforce connector to send prefilled survey forms to partners to gather their insights on FormAssembly and offer the ability to update information at the same time.

The form above pulls in some contact information for a customer and goes on to ask further questions about how the partner uses FormAssembly.

The form above pulls in information from both the contact and the account associated with it, and sends survey responses to a custom survey object that we created in Salesforce. In this form, we also prefill some hidden fields like contact and account ID to ensure record accuracy when the recipients’ submission is passed through the Salesforce Submit Connector. Here’s a deeper dive into how the connectors were set up to make this survey happen.

1. Our setup uses the Salesforce submit and prefill connectors.

2. Partners access the form through a personalized email with a link to the prefilled form.

3. The prefill connector prefills both contact and account information.

4. The submit connector updates contact and account information and sends survey responses to a custom object in Salesforce.

Follow-Up With Customers Post-Cancellation

Losing business can feel like suffering a crushing defeat, especially if the cancellation came out of nowhere. But customers cancel for a variety of different reasons. Depending on their rationale, you can learn from the loss of a customer and make changes to your business or readjust your strategy to avoid losing more customers for the same reason.

You can learn why your customers cancel with a well-timed post-cancellation survey prefilled with the information you have on them and including questions about why they left.

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FormAssembly can act as a Salesforce Stay-In-Touch Alternative, but it does so much more than that. Create surveys and store answers in Salesforce, keep your Salesforce records up-to-date easily, and engage your customers with attractive and easy-to-fill out forms.

Sign up for a FormAssembly plan today and find out what a form solution can do for your business.

The post 3 Ways to Use FormAssembly to Keep in Touch With Customers Throughout the Lifecycle appeared first on The Assembly Line.

Dig deeper into using FormAssembly on your sales or marketing team with our newest eBook: “Web Forms for Sales & Marketing Teams.”

In this eBook, we cover plenty of reasons to use FormAssembly to improve sales and marketing efforts, in addition to best practices for creating forms and what to look for in the ideal form solution.

Download the eBook today!

Why Do Sales and Marketing Teams Need a Form Solution?

The eBook goes into greater detail, but the simple answer to this question is that sales and marketing professionals need to collect data to do their jobs. They also need a solution that’s agile, easy-to-customize, and connected to key systems like Salesforce and payment processors.

The right form solution will allow you to easily create sophisticated, branded web forms and be compliant with requirements for sensitive data like healthcare and payment information.

What Will I Learn in This eBook?

• Neat FormAssembly features like our mobile app and Salesforce connector that help you do your job faster
• Tips for creating better, more effective forms
• Details about our Enterprise-level security for select plans
• Further reading and examples of how other businesses have used FormAssembly to improve their processes

What Steps Should I Take After Reading This eBook?

After downloading the eBook, you can try FormAssembly out for yourself with an extended trial (code included in the eBook!). Reach out to us by email or chat with any other questions!

Download the eBook today!

The post New eBook: Web Forms for Sales & Marketing Teams appeared first on The Assembly Line.

What’s one of the best ways to be ethical with your forms? Don’t trick your users into doing something they don’t want to do or don’t realize they’re doing.

Sounds obvious, right? If you said yes, then congratulations! You must be an ethical business professional. But forms that trick users are more common than you might think. Read on to learn exactly how form questions can be used to mislead people.

That way you can recognize them when you’re filling out forms and stop yourself if you find that you’re using deceptive practices in your forms.

Dark Patterns: A Fantastic Source of Form Ethics Information

Today’s ethical form dilemma comes to you from Dark Patterns, one of the leading sources of information about unethical website and form design. Dark Patterns has plenty of examples of websites using elements of web design and layout to deliberately mislead users and influence them to take an action that they might not otherwise.

What is a Trick Question?

According to Dark Patterns, a trick question is a question that “when glanced upon quickly appears to ask one thing, but if read carefully, asks another thing entirely.” Trick questions take advantage of people’s tendency to skim through web pages instead of reading every word.

It’s estimated that people only scroll about halfway through pages and only read about 20 percent of the text on the page.

Dark Patterns lists several different examples of trick questions on their websites. Here are some big ones to look out for:

• In our first form ethics post, we talked about a form that required users to check a box if they didn’t want to be an organ donor. (Not surprisingly, organ donor rates increased after this form was implemented because few people realized that they had to take an action to avoid signing up as an organ donor.) Dark Patterns presents an example where Costco used a similar tactic by requiring users to check a box to opt out of email communications.
• It’s pretty reasonable to assume that one click on a form will result in one outcome, right? An example from a Craigslist-like site called Kijiji.ca shows a website where one click causes two things to happen: it both activates an ad and makes you pay $5 to promote it.
• Forms are the last place that you should be confusing. Dark Patterns provides an example of a trick question on an MBNA credit card signup form. Instead of a simple opt-in checkbox for communications, the form includes two statements:
  • “Please don’t contact me” (with two checkboxes that read “By post” and “By phone”)
  • “Please do contact me” (with two checkboxes that read “By email” and “By text message”)

These options don’t make it clear how to avoid receiving communications, and in fact, seem to say that you’ll receive communications no matter what you click or don’t click.

Where Does Your Responsibility Lie?

So what? You might be asking. None of these examples cause the users harm or cost a large amount of money, so what’s the big deal?

The big deal is that marketers and business people have ethical standards to uphold, and any company that ignores these has the potential to make the whole profession look bad.

Let’s take a look at the Statement of Ethics from the American Marketing Association. The AMA, established in 1937 and now up to around 30,000 members, can safely be considered an authority in the marketing world.

The AMA’s Statement of Ethics begins with the following text regarding the conduct of marketing professionals:

Looking at trick questions in forms through the lens of this ethics code, it’s pretty clear that they don’t count as ethical behavior. Sure, they might allow you to get more people to sign up for your emails or purchase something you’re selling, but in the long run, they could undermine your credibility.

Who knows? An ethically questionable form could even result in you becoming an example of what not to do on DarkPatterns.org.

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Even if you think there aren’t consequences to using trick questions on your customers, it’s better to avoid them if you’re unsure. Read more of our posts on ethical forms, and share your comments below or on Twitter!

The post Form Ethics Series: Dark Patterns and Questions Designed to Trick You appeared first on The Assembly Line.

Form building can be a long, tedious process if you’re starting from scratch every single time. Writing out field labels, selecting the right validations, creating placeholder text and hints, configuring conditional fields, building out lists of options: all the time spent doing this can really add up and get in the way of your other work.

But most of that repetitive work isn’t really necessary, at least, if you know how to take advantage of FormAssembly’s predefined content feature.

If you have used predefined content, you’re probably nodding your head in agreement right now; if you haven’t used the predefined content feature yet, prepare to be blown away. (And be prepared to start creating forms way faster.)

The predefined content feature lets you create and save commonly used fields (in addition to offering several useful existing predefined fields and groups) so you can quickly insert them into your forms later on. It’s a great way to speed up the form building process if you’re using a lot of the same custom fields and groups of fields in your forms.

Here are the key things you need to know about predefined content:

1. Take Advantage of Existing Predefined Content

We really don’t expect you to have to enter every single state name if you’re including a state field in your forms. The same goes countries and provinces. People often need to include these fields in forms, which is why we made predefined content options for these fields that you can find already loaded and ready to go in your form builder.

These come in handy if you’re using forms that require people to include their address, such as an order form, event signup form, job application, or many other types of form. There are more than just lists in the existing predefined content. You’ll also find other common form fields and be able to insert them into your forms without having to select a field type, add the form label and decide on the validation type every time. Some of the predefined content fields you might want to try in your forms include:

• First and last name
• A date field with a pop-up calendar
• A generic multiple choice field with an option for “Other”
• Long or abbreviated groups of contact fields
• A Likert Scale to record preferences along a scale from “Strongly Disagree” to “Strongly Agree”

Likert scales, and all of the predefined content we include in the form builder, can be made manually, but using the predefined version saves you a considerable amount of time. Browse through the predefined to see which ones you could use in your own forms.

2. Make Your Own Predefined Content

You can turn any field you create into a predefined content option. Keeping it organized is easy, as you can choose what category it falls under and delete it when you no longer have need of it. Better yet, creating new predefined content can fold seamlessly into the form creation process. If you create a field you think you might be able to use in other forms, a few clicks lets you name it and add it to predefined content.

3. Save Predefined Individual Fields or Groups of Fields

In addition to creating predefined fields and individual questions, you can also create groups of questions and save them to reuse in your forms. Predefined groups of content can contain any field you choose as well as any text or images you want to add to them.

How can you put this into practice? Job applications, for example, might contain a number of the same questions. Instead of creating those questions each time, you could create predefined groups of fields for the questions you ask every candidate and customize a job application with questions specific to the job.

There are just about limitless other examples of how you could use predefined content, but here are just a few suggestions to get you started:

• Create standard groups of onboarding questions to include in client forms
• Create a predefined menu with donation levels for your event or nonprofit organization
• Create a Likert scale (start with the predefined option) feedback form that can be included at the bottom of order forms
• Create a predefined set of checkboxes to let customers sign up for email newsletters of their choice.

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Ready to get started with predefined content? You can learn more about it in our documentation or try it out for yourself in the form builder. Let us know how predefined content makes your form building experience better and faster. Have an idea we didn’t mention for using it in your forms? We’d love to hear about it on Twitter or in the comments below.

The post 3 Reasons to Use Predefined Content in Your Forms appeared first on The Assembly Line.

At FormAssembly, we don’t just help you create forms. We help you create exceptional, user-friendly, smart, and connected web forms. To help pull it all together, we’ve compiled four of our most useful web form design tips from four of our top form building posts. These are simple pieces of advice that you can use on your forms today. Let’s get started!

1. Don’t Think That Web Forms Have to Follow the Same Conventions as Paper Forms

Forms are forms, right? Wrong.

When you’re upgrading to a web form solution, it can be tempting to take the easy way out by simply copying your paper forms to the digital version. Field for field, no changes in the layout, no thought for user experience.

This might be the easiest way, but it’s not the best in terms usability or conversion rates. Remember, when you’re not constrained by paper, you no longer have to save space by cramming as many fields as possible into the same space.

Spread out fields and consider one-column layouts, which can be less taxing to move through and fill out. If you have forms that require a lot of scrolling, consider breaking them up onto multiple pages.

Lastly, consider using conditional fields that only appear if a user enters a certain answer. That’s definitely not something that you can do on paper, but your users will appreciate the streamlined look and ease of use.

2. Creative, On-Brand Contact Forms Can Be More Enjoyable to Fill Out

Why would you create a beautiful, unique website, only to use generic and boring contact forms? It doesn’t make a lot of sense, does it? Forms can be as beautiful and well-designed as they are functional.

Make sure your branding is cohesive across all areas of your website, including your contact forms. Here are a few of the examples we’ve given in the past of contact forms that are pleasing to look at and easy to fill out. Much better than a boring black and white contact form, huh?

Pillow Homes

• Attractive, contrasting colors
• Brand consistency
• A bright CTA button
• An interesting CTA (Not just “submit”)

Zenefits

• Orange CTA button (one of the best colors for conversion)
• On-brand fonts and colors

If/When/How (A FormAssembly Customer!)

• On-brand fonts and colors
• Clean and simple layout
• Bright Submit button

Do you have any other examples of great contact forms? Let us know about them!

3. Reduce User Mouse Usage for Better Web Form Design

Forms should be as easy as possible for your users to fill out. We’ll get into why you should reduce form fields later on, but there are other ways of making forms more usable that you might not have thought of.

For instance, are you laying out your forms so they require the least amount of mouse usage and clicks possible? Or do you forms require your users to do an unnecessary amount of work just to answer simple questions?

Consider a drop-down menu for example. To make a selection from this type of form field, users have to take a few steps. They have to click on the drop down to view the options. They have to click again to scroll through the options, and they have to click a final time to select an option.

Now think about radio buttons. With this form field type, users only have to peruse their options and click once to select one. We don’t have to tell you that one click is better than three or more when it comes to web form usability.

In addition to the types of form fields you use, this tip also applies to how forms are laid-out. Remember how we said multiple columns are a paper form convention that’s often needlessly transferred to web forms? Well, there’s another reason not to use them. Using multiple columns requires more mouse usage than a simple one-column form.

These are simple, almost effortless ways you can improve the UX of your forms.

4. Don’t Include Unnecessary Form Fields, and Be Concise With the Ones You Do Include

The concept of exchange is a pretty well-known concept for marketers. To get something you want from customers, you have to offer something of value in return.

If the value you’re offering isn’t good enough or useful enough, or if you’re asking too much in return, your customer might not see the point of sharing their contact information with you.

There are plenty of forms out there that demonstrate this idea of an unequal exchange. Take lead forms for example. Some only ask for a few details of information (and in return you’ll get a downloadable resource, etc.), but others ask for your title, your industry, multiple forms of contact information, and even your budget.

Do you think that’s an equal exchange? To some, maybe, but to others, probably not. Consider how much you’re asking of the people filling out your forms and whether it equals what you’re offering.

Cut out unnecessary fields (phone number, etc.) and be brief and to the point with any fields you do include. Especially with public-facing forms that aren’t mandatory (lead forms, customer surveys, etc.) you want to reduce the burden of filling them out as much as possible.

Which one do you think is most user-friendly?

Or…

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Those are some of our best tips, but we’ve got plenty more! Share any others you think we missed on Twitter or in the comments section.

Ready to put this tips into practice?

Try FormAssembly today!

The post 4 Awesome Pieces of Form Advice from 4 of Our Top Web Form Building Posts appeared first on The Assembly Line.

Doing paperwork isn’t on anyone’s list of favorite tasks, no matter what role or industry you’re in. Luckily, there are tools and solutions in place that can cut out the drudgery and reduce repetitive, tedious data entry.

FormAssembly and WebMerge are two such tools that can be used together to streamline paperwork in sales, the healthcare industry, and more.

Here are some popular examples of how FormAssembly customers can use WebMerge to simplify their paperwork process:

Patient Registration Forms

In the healthcare world, there is a lot of information to be collected from patients and no shortage of paperwork to go with it. Medical offices around the world use FormAssembly and WebMerge to collect patient registration information, then populate the PDF version of the registration form, which can then be saved in their patient records and processed in the office.

FormAssembly has the added benefit for healthcare organizations of being HIPAA-compliant on the Compliance Cloud offering.

Sales Contracts

Sales contracts can be a very repetitive task. However, if you use FormAssembly to collect information from customers on new deals, you can use WebMerge to automatically populate contracts with that information. You can even send the contract over to an e-signature service like HelloSign without lifting a finger!

Real Estate Agreements

Real estate agents are always on the move and they’re always trying to generate new business. By using a FormAssembly form, they can easily gather information about their new clients from anywhere. Then with WebMerge, those real estate agents can automatically populate their client agreements without having to be in the office.

Sales Proposals

Proposing new business can be time-consuming, and collecting information over the phone can be a waste of time. With a FormAssembly form, you can easily collect all the information you need from a prospective customer and then instantly generate a proposal that gets emailed to that prospect directly. They’ll be able to review the proposal instantly and you don’t have to take the time to manually fill out their information to generate a proposal.

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As you can see, there are many different ways that you can use FormAssembly and WebMerge together to save your business time (and money). Gone are the days of searching for templates and manually filling out the information.  

Can you think of any other ways that you could use WebMerge to simplify your paperwork process? Let us know in the comments below or on Twitter!

Ready to try out FormAssembly + WebMerge for yourself? View pricing and features and pick the right plan for your organization.

Jeremy Clarke

Jeremy Clarke is the founder of WebMerge and loves automation.  He has worked with thousands of businesses to optimize their workflows, so they can save time, money, and ultimately grow their business.

The post Simplify These 4 Common Paperwork Processes with FormAssembly + WebMerge appeared first on The Assembly Line.

What’s one tool that can help you create everything from contact forms to payable invoices to entire customer portals, all with state-of-the-art features and integrations? FormAssembly: the best data collection and form creation solution available for Enterprise companies.

Prominent organizations such as Amazon, Aetna, and Harvard University trust FormAssembly to help them gather data and streamline workflows. Here are five reasons you should, too:

1. Make Simple Work of Complex Processes

You know how it goes. Your company finds a new solution to manage, organize, simplify, or process something, and at first it works great.

Then you find that the solution just adds more work for you to do, or it lacks a key functionality that has you searching for yet another tool. Then the process of researching, finding, and vetting a new solution starts all over again.

With FormAssembly Enterprise Cloud, you can combine your need for multiple solutions into one. That means less researching, less vetting for IT, and fewer tools to juggle in your data collection process.

What do we mean by multiple solutions? Well, FormAssembly can manage:

• Customer support forms
• Payment forms
• Customer account portals
• Survey forms
• Job applications and review forms

And that’s just a sample of all the different use cases for FormAssembly. You can find many more examples here.

2. Lock Up Form Access With Respondent Authentication

FormAssembly is great for all types of external, public-facing forms, but it’s also fantastic for transforming internal processes (think: vacation requests, employee onboarding and training, job application reviews). When you’re using FormAssembly internally, you may need to restrict access to specific people. Your security policies might require increased safeguards to protect confidential information and ensure data privacy.

On FormAssembly Enterprise plans, you have the ability to keep internal forms secure with SAML, LDAP, and CAS authentication. That means only the right people will be able to access your forms.

3. Simplify Everyone’s Job, from HR to IT

FormAssembly can be used in just about every department:

• Marketing (event signup forms, ebook download pages)
• Sales (lead forms, sales contracts)
• HR (online job applications)
• Finance (payable invoices)

IT also benefits from an Enterprise plan with FormAssembly because of the ability to have administrative oversight over all forms. Not only does IT no longer have to be called in to make a simple contact form, they can easily keep an eye on what kinds of forms are being created and what kinds of permissions users have.

4. Connect Data, Get Rid of Manual Data Entry

Business moves fast, and there’s little time for manual data entry from your forms, whether that means paper forms that you have to scan or transcribe into your systems or exporting information from one system and then having to import it to another.

One of FormAssembly’s strengths is the ability to connect your information with systems you use. Need to send just about any information to Salesforce? Use a FormAssembly form. You can create new records or update existing ones to keep your CRM data tidy.

5. Finally Find That Personalized Data Collection Solution Your Company Needs

Think your business needs are too specific and too complex for a web form solution? You’d be surprised. FormAssembly’s Professional Services team can tackle all kinds of procedures and simplify them with smart, user-friendly web forms. Here’s an example:

California Quivers, a speciality beverage company, tried different methods to handle their customer accounts before finding out that FormAssembly’s Professional Services Team could create a multi-functional, customized customer portal with web forms.

Professional Services can help implement complex projects, but they can also deliver trainings to help you get up to speed with a FormAssembly account faster. Contact sales@formassembly.com today for more information about Professional Services.

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Interested to see if FormAssembly is right for your business? Learn more about the FormAssembly Enterprise plan and contact a rep today.

The post 5 Reasons to Use FormAssembly: Enterprise appeared first on The Assembly Line.