How To Create A Customer Order Form

If you're conducting business online, your website needs a way to accept orders and process payment. Users intending to buy something on your site expect a process that guides them through both of these functions.

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If you don't provide leads with a safe way to place an order and pay for your goods and services, you could lose out on business — and why keep losing when you can easily create your own customized order forms?

Keep reading to keep reading for tips, tools, and form templates for creating a fantastic order form.

How to Create an Order Form

Pick your order form tool.
Determine your order form fields.
Set up your payment processing system.
Customize and brand your order form.
Create a confirmation page to display after customers place an order.

Here's a closer look at the process.

1. Pick the order form tool most suited to your needs.

You need the right tool for the job, so choose the tool most suited to your needs. Many order form builders can handle a range of tasks, so you need to know what to look for. We cover some helpful form building tools throughout this article.

2. Determine your order form fields.

Decide which fields to include on your order form, and how many. What information do you need from customers? Only collect relevant information, and don't make questions ambiguous or lengthy.

3. Set up your payment processing system.

Set up a secure payment gateway to accept funds. The best choice will depend on your target demographic(s). Some popular options include various banks, PayPal, Stripe, and Authorize.net.

4. Customize and brand your order form.

Your order form should also be customized according to your company branding. For example, including your logo will help to better associate your order form with your brand — establishing trust between you and your customers.

5. Create a confirmation page to display after customers place an order.

Express gratitude and set expectations with a thank you page that appears to customers after placing an order. Use this to share your appreciation and include some information about what the user should expect to happen next.

Whether you're selling products from your warehouse or accepting donations for your non-profit organization, you can set up a smooth process for users to submit the necessary details, increasing your chances of success.

WordPress Order Forms

There are quite a few tools and plugins available to help you create order forms for your WordPress site.

Forminator

Forminator is a free WordPress plugin developed by WPMU DEV, the team behind popular plugins such as Hummingbird and Smush.

Forminator's user interface offers a polished design characteristic of WPMU DEV tools. It's drag-and-drop editor is easy to use for building your order form and any other type of form you may want to build.

Forminator supports integration with several third party tools to expand its reach. They include Zapier, Trello, Google Sheets, AWeber, and MailChimp. It offers full support for the Gutenberg editor, including a Forminator block.

Forms created using Forminator default to an elegant and modern design. This doesn't replace the need for customization and you can choose from a selection of themes to give your form a desired look and feel.

In general, you can customize almost any aspect of your order form. Forminator lets you modify the typography of the fields and you can even add custom CSS.

HubSpot's WordPress Plugin

HubSpot's WordPress plugin is a suite of free tools designed to boost your digital marketing efforts. It allows you to connect your WordPress site to the HubSpot CRM and access relevant marketing tools from your WordPress dashboard.

Among the tools offered by HubSpot's WordPress plugin is the form builder. It's an intuitive drag-and-drop editor that makes it easy to build and publish your order form. It also supports WordPress' Gutenberg editor, which allows you to easily embed your order form in a post.

If you prefer to use a third-party tool for your forms, HubSpot's WordPress plugin makes it possible by integrating with other WordPress form building plugins.

Pro tip: The HubSpot WordPress plugin will also let you use HubSpot email marketing, popups, live chat, and analytics on your WordPress website.

WPForms

WPForms is one of the most popular WordPress form builders, trusted by more than 4 million users of all skill levels. Its drag-and-drop builder and 100+ templates make it a great choice for beginners, and its advanced features such as smart logic and integrations make it equally useful for power users.

Some key features include:

More than 100+ templates for a variety of use cases
Build surveys and polls with the survey add-on
Use conditional logic to show or hide fields, provide payment choices, and subscribe to newsletters based on user selections

WPForms is compatible with a variety of other tools such as HubSpot, Constant Contact, Mailchimp, Paypal, and others.

Gravity Forms

Gravity Forms is popular as the most powerful form building plugin for WordPress. It's more advanced than form builders such as Contact Form 7 and offers more functionality right out of the box.

Some favorite features include:

Conditional logic (also referred to as "skip" logic) allows you to display form fields depending on earlier entries made by the user.
The ability to route notifications makes it a great tool to create forms for large organizations where you may need to notify different team members about specific responses or forms.
Access to conversion data can help you tweak your campaign for better results.

Despite being so advanced, Gravity Forms is beginner-friendly. You don't have to learn code to set up and customize your order form. A point and click interface allows you to easily add and remove elements on your order form without technical skills.

Order Form Templates

Not sure where to start in terms of fields to include in your order form and general formatting? Here are some examples for inspiration:

Cupcake Order Form

free order form templates cupcake order form

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This dessert order form displays fields for various types of cupcake, complete with pictures to whet the appetite. The order total is easy to keep track of, relevant contact details are requested, and there's an optional field for messages and suggestions.

Vehicle Order Form

free order form templates vehicle order form

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The vehicle order form makes it easy for car buyers to make their orders online. All the necessary details are requested on the form to ensure customer satisfaction.

Gadget Order Form

free order form templates gadget order form

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Do you sell electronic devices? This form can help you to facilitate sales online. You can change product fields to match what you're selling and customize all other important aspects to match your audience.

In addition, consider these order form template resource examples:

Smartsheet: Offers a variety of work order templates for small businesses and non-profit organizations that are free to download and customize.
JotForm: Helps you create and customize your order forms online.
Business Form Template: For $200, you can customize, download, and print this entire collection of business templates.
Formget: An online form builder to help you automate your sales and marketing.

Order Form Building Tools

On the surface, order form building tools seem alike. Most offer the same basic form fields, provide basic theme designs, and have drag-and-drop editing functionality.

Google Forms

There are many reasons that make Google Forms one of the most popular order form builders:

It's free. All you need to use the tool is a Google account.
It auto-saves to Google Sheets. This spreadsheet allows for advanced analysis.
It's incredibly fast. Setting up a Google order form is comparatively faster than most of Google Forms' competitors.

All the basic form fields you'd need are on the tool and Google Forms add-ons make it easy to add more fields. You can customize your questions for long or short answers, multiple-choice selection, and show different sets of questions depending on what a user has already filled out.

One major drawback of Google Forms is that it doesn't allow you to accept payments — you'll have to facilitate that process with another tool.

Zoho Forms

If you're using Zoho Apps, you may want to build your order forms using Zoho Forms for these reasons:

A Zoho CRM integration that makes it easy to keep relevant customer information in one central place.
Easy integration with Zoho Survey. You can connect data collection apps within Zoho to make your order forms more effective.
There are numerous collaboration tools within Zoho Apps that you can integrate with your form building tool and better work with your team.

Built-in data security measures make Zoho Apps a safe environment for your business operations. You can take comfort when using Zoho Forms knowing there's little chance of your data being compromised. Additionally, you can customize the forms to appear exactly how you want to improve conversions and customer satisfaction.

Order form building tools aren't necessarily built the same way. Some offer better features overall, while others have capabilities that give them an edge when it comes to performing certain tasks. Depending on what you want to accomplish, you might prefer one tool over another.

Generally, here are some of the basic qualities of all great order form building tools:

Flexibility: they allow you to create many types of forms, not just order forms.
Ease of use: they are simple, designed to help you build your form quickly and easily.
Compatibility: the tool you choose should be compatible with your website. Some are only designed for WordPress while others are offered by website builders such as Wix and Squarespace.

Create an Engaging Order Form for Your Customers

Almost every business website needs some type of order form. It's worth investing in a tool that can handle all your form needs.

Take your time finding the most suitable tool for your business and put in the necessary effort to let your order forms shine.

Use HubSpot tools on your WordPress website and connect the two platforms without dealing with code. Click here to learn more.

Originally published Apr 7, 2020 9:46:04 AM, updated November 02 2021