How To Create a Multi-Step Form with Progress Bars

Long forms not converting? Try a multi-step form with progress bars! We'll show you how to create a multi-page form on a WordPress site.

Approximate read time: 6.5 minutes

Do you want to build a multi-step form on your WordPress site? You're in the right place!

Multi-step forms (multi-page or multi-part forms) enhance user experience and boost form conversions. More on that below.

Create a Form Now!

Before we start, let's look at why a multi-step form can increase conversion rates and grow businesses.

Why use a multi-step form in WordPress?

Nothing kills excitement like a super long form.

We've all been there. Ready to sign up for a new website, but wait! The signup form is too long...

Did you skip it? If you did, you wouldn't be the only one.

The business data experts at The Manifest found that 81% of people have abandoned a form before completing it. They also found that 27% left a form because it was too long.

That's not all, though. The landing page experts at Instapage chronicled a case where multi-step forms increased lead conversion by 214%. If your forms are too long, stats like these say it's time to split them up!

The problem with long forms is that completing them feels like work to the end-user. Your business or your client's business solves problems. Not create new ones! Long forms increase friction, which leads to lower conversion rates.

Friction in a form is like walking in tar. Any part of the conversion process that slows the user down makes them less likely to complete the action. In other words, it's bad news.

So what's the solution? You guessed it! A form with multiple steps.

As we mentioned before, splitting forms into smaller parts is great for improving form conversions. But there are other uses, too.

For instance, you can use multi-step forms for quizzes or longer surveys. Both of which are great tools to learn more about your audience.

And if you sell services online with WordPress, you need multi-step forms to get more customers.

Convinced? Let's take a look at some best practices.

Multi-step form best practices

Noted American statistician Edward Tufte said, "The most common user action on a website is to flee." Yikes! Nobody wants that...

When you think of web traffic in those terms, it likely makes you want to optimize every aspect of the website you're building. That's a long but rewarding undertaking. As a first step, let's learn some best practices for multi-step forms.

• Optimize your CTA button (submit button): Change the text on your form button to show users that there will be another page. You could change the text on your button to "Next →," for example.
• Segment form steps logically: Try to group form fields logically. For example, group payment and shipping info together. Always think about the end-user when dividing your form up with page breaks.
• Use a progress bar: Navigating between each page and jumping to a different step is easier. This also allows users to go back and fix mistakes.
• Include a summary page: Users can preview their submission before submitting, which reduces incorrect submissions.

Following these guidelines will help a lot when it comes to multi-step forms. But don't forget about all the other things you can do to generate more leads on your site!

Step 1: Create a form in WordPress

You only need a great WordPress multi-step form builder to start.

A great progress bar plugin for forms will quickly solve the problem.

We have a list of the best multi-step form WordPress plugins, but we'll focus on the top option for now. And that's Formidable Forms.

Try Formidable Forms!

The first thing we need to do is create a form in the WordPress admin. You can create a registration form, contact form, or any other form you need with Formidable.

And for this tutorial, we'll install Formidable Forms Pro. After that, click Formidable → Add New to create a new form.

You can create any form you want. We'll show you how to create a multi-step contact form to keep things simple. Here are a few multi-step form designs our team built for you. Check out these stepped form templates:

• Create a WooCommerce product
• Travel booking form
• Mortgage application form

Step 2: Split up a form with page breaks

Once you've created a form, the next step is to add page breaks. These break the form into multi-step forms!

To add page breaks to a form, use Formidable's drag and drop form builder. Under Advanced Fields, drag the Page Break field into the form.

We divided the form after the First Name and Email Address fields onto multiple pages in this example.

Step 3: Add a progress bar

After you've split the form into at least two parts, you can give each part a name.

You can do this by going into the Form Settings and switching the Pagination option to Show Progress Bar.

You could also adjust the Page Titles, hide the Page Numbers, or hide the Pagination Lines. We recommend checking the box titled Show page titles with steps and labeling each page. This helps users know which page they are on when looking at the horizontal progress bar.

In our example, we will name the pages Contact Info and Your Message. Remember, naming your pages in multi-step forms can help users know where they are in the form submission process.

Step 4: Choose the progress bar design

Now that you've set up a form, you might want to ensure the WordPress progress bar matches the site and your form design.

But first, choose the progress bar style you're after. There are two options in the Form Settings tab as your default progress bar.

These are the Progress Bar:

And the Rootline:

Once you've chosen the one that best fits the site design, it's time to tweak the colors for the progress bar.

To do this, head to Formidable → Styles → Progress Bars and set any color scheme you want.

You can preview the progress bar background colors, text colors, and circle sizes immediately as you adjust. And by the way, this time-saving visual styler doesn't require any coding!

Step 5: Publish the multi-step form

Now, add your new multi-step form to any page or post and publish the form.

Before wrapping up, you might want to consider more optimization, like conditional logic. With conditional logic, you can ensure site users only answer the questions that matter most based on their input.

In the case of multi-step forms, the possibilities with conditional logic are endless!

Here's one simple idea: Ask users to choose their request using a dropdown box on the first page. You can then configure the form to show different options based on their selection!

Ready to create your multi-step form with a progress bar?

That's it! Hopefully, this has shown you how easy it is to create a multi-step form and progress bar.

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