5 Reasons You Should Implement Prefilled Online Forms

Organizations use online forms to collect data for a variety of purposes, including event RSVPs, school or club registration, survey and research projects, online orders, digital payments and much more. The data you collect via online forms is essential, or you wouldn’t be asking customers to provide it. But if you’ve been disappointed by the response rate to your forms, it’s time to think about why more people aren’t completing them.

It’s always a good idea to evaluate form length and make sure each field is necessary so that you minimize the time required to complete the form. Design can also be a user roadblock, so make sure you’re using design best practices. You can use A/B testing to try alternative designs and see if you get a better response rate. But the best way to improve conversions is to use prefilled online forms. 

Since many enterprise-level businesses integrate user data to prefill online forms, virtually anyone who shops online has experienced the convenience of pre-populated form fields. But today there are affordable or even free no-code options that allow organizations of any size to offer customers the benefits and convenience of prefilled forms. Here are five reasons to make the switch:

Happier customers and higher conversion rates: When customers click on a form that prefills with their data, the company sends a signal that they value their customers and their customers’ time. Filling out the form is a less time-consuming task, so customers are more likely to follow through. You can increase conversions by as much as 200% vs. forms that require users to manually enter their information. 

The data is already there: Using prefilled forms leverages data that’s already stored in systems like your CRM, customer data spreadsheets, internal management databases, single sign-on (SSO) servers, other forms, third-party tables, etc. You might as well put that data to work in a way that removes barriers to form submission. 

Reduced risk of error: If you pre-populate form fields via a connector that imports data from other sources by matching related fields automatically (or one that gives you the option to manually choose which fields to match via a drop-down menu), you can reduce errors introduced by manual operations like building prefilled forms via URL parameters.

More on Online Forms: JotForm Announces Approvals, a No-Code Approval Flow Automation Solution

Customized marketing and sales messaging: Prefill integrations like HubSpot Prefill and Salesforce Prefill allow your marketing and sales teams to significantly improve lead conversion by customizing messages. Using prefill software integrations also prevents data duplication by ensuring that the right information is submitted.

 Better data security: The last — and maybe the most important — reason you should be using prefilled online forms is that they can improve data security. Using a service that connects the form to SSO data or creates a token-generated URL for each user can ensure that sensitive data doesn’t get exposed to third parties, preventing data breaches that can result in loss of customer trust. 

There are a variety of ways to implement a prefilled forms strategy, and the best solution for your business will depend on the software you use, your company’s online forms use case, and your personal preferences. But offering customers the convenience of prefilled forms is quickly evolving from a “nice to have” feature to table stakes — a feature customers expect. 

Using pre-filled online forms addresses form abandonment issues to drive more submissions, improves conversions on e-commerce sites to generate more revenue, and alleviates data discrepancies and security risks. So, if you’re ready to improve underperforming online forms, consider implementing a prefilled form strategy on your site. Your users will reward you with higher submission levels. 

[To share your insights with us, please write to sghosh@martechseries.com]