Five Tips to Effectively Use Bitrix24 CRM Web Forms

What Is a Web Form?

We couldn’t start off without a proper intro. For everyone who’s not quite familiar with the concept of a web form, here’s a simple explanation.

A web form (aka “webform” or “HTML form” if you’re picky) is a part of a web page that is designed for collecting specific information from users, which they have to enter and which is later sent to a server for processing.

If you’ve been on the Internet for more than a few hours in your life, you must have seen at least one web form. They all look more or less the same - typically, it’s a form that features several empty text fields to be filled out, checkboxes, or radio buttons. Here’s one that might look strangely familiar:

Basically, any Contact Us or Sign Up page can be considered a web form. However, something tells us that you didn’t come here for “contacting” or “signing up” - you must be interested in using web forms for marketing. The good news is that web forms can help you in this department too - let’s see how.

Using Web Forms for Marketing

Marketers use web forms for their own purposes, most of which have something to do with:

• Obtaining information on potential clients (and using this information later)

• Tracking customer order and purchase data

• Receiving feedback

• Capturing leads

Any kind of information you deem worth collecting and your customers don’t mind providing can and should be collected via web forms.

Now, it’s one thing collecting data - you also need to store and manage this data in a way that is convenient and (preferably) automated to some degree. After all, the data itself is not going to do you any good if you are not able to process it and make some definitive conclusions that you can act upon.

That’s why most businesses are looking not just for web forms (which are, essentially HTML code) but for a service that will allow them to run the whole web form scenario from start to finish, including things like:

• web form creation (in a template-based fashion where you don’t have to code anything, just make a few tweaks to a pre-made web form template)

• complete customization (where you can change any parameter - from the background color to the placement of elements)

• quick launch (where you click just one button and your web form goes live on your website the same second)

• CRM integration (so that you would be able to capture your lead data and have it automatically added to your CRM)

• built-in tracking and analytics (to track vital marketing stats like views, CTR, conversion rate, etc.)

Not many services out there can provide you with all this wealth of functionality at once - and Bitrix24 just happens to be one of them.

Web Forms in Bitrix24

Being a product designed BY marketers and FOR marketers, Bitrix24 features web forms that are integrated with the in-house CRM by default, which provides you, the user, with a seamless experience.

Depending on the type of information you want to collect and where you would like to place your web forms, you can choose from the following types of forms within Bitrix24:

• Contact form

Typically used for customer service purposes or simply for providing your site visitors with a way to contact you in an organized fashion. May contain fields like name, contact details, and some optional ones. 

• Registration/signup form

A must-have for any website and/or online store, this is something that every user has to go through before they can purchase from you. An integral part of any registration process is creating a user account and storing the newly created user credentials for return visits.

• Lead generation form

Although registration can also be used for capturing leads, the lead generation form takes this game to the pro level. Here, users would be typically required to enter their personal information (name, company/organization, phone/email, etc.)

• Order form

Again, another must-have for any online store or service. This form usually features multiple steps, such as providing customer info, payment details, shipping address, etc. Additional data protection must be ensured since payment details are the type of information you do not want to mishandle.

• Survey form

Depending on the type of survey, this form may contain fill-in-the-blank, multiple-choice, or simply long-form responses (or all of the above combined). An ideal way to learn more about your customers.

• Custom form

Basically, anything else that you may come up with.

In addition to having all of these different types of web forms, Bitrix24 also features allows you to choose how exactly you want your web form to be presented:

• Embedded on your website page(s) - most common choice

• Displayed in a pop-up window (opens only if a user clicks on the button/link) - works great for order forms

• Displayed in a pop-up window with a time delay - although generally despised by users and search engines alike, this type of web form presentation is still used in a limited capacity

Let’s see how we can use these web forms to make them really work for you and generate even more leads and sales.   

How to Use Bitrix24 CRM Web Forms More Effectively

The beauty of web forms in Bitrix24 is that they are already integrated with all of our services, including CRM, Website Builder, and Sales Intelligence. This, combined with the fact that we have released a majorly upgraded Web For Designer recently, makes creating web forms an easy, intuitive, and quite an enjoyable process. Here are a few tips on how to achieve maximum efficiency with your web forms in Bitrix24.

1. Themes

Choose one of our 5 pre-made themes, which are based on the most common web form design of 2020. This will save you plenty of time choosing the right colors and/or fonts. For example, if you’re going for a strict, let’s-get-down-to-business style, try using the Business theme - no distracting elements, just bare essentials.

2. Required fields

Make certain fields “required” by marking them so in the web form menu - if a user tries to send this form without completing the required fields (e.g., phone number), the form will show a relevant message and prompt the user to fill in the required field(s).  

3. Create CRM entities tied in with your web forms

Since web forms in Bitrix24 are integrated with CRM, you get a whole world of marketing automation possibilities opened up. One of them is the ability to specify what CRM element to create when a client has filled your web form (Lead, Contact, Deal, or Quote).

For example, you can have every user who has created an account on your website added to your CRM automatically as a Lead (since that’s essentially what they are, from a business perspective). The newly created CRM entry will contain some (or all) of the information your site visitors provide you with when they fill in your web form.

Not only that but you can also have these newly created CRM entries automatically assigned to one (or several) of your sales reps thus building a continuous, self-sufficient workflow that does not require any of your input once it’s been set up. That’s what we’d like to call “set and forget” - and it’s that good, you just have to try it.

4. Enable Google Analytics for your web forms

Using Google Analytics data may give you a wealth of information regarding your web form performance and potential ideas for improving the conversion rate.

With Bitrix24 CRM web forms, you can easily connect Google Analytics to any of your web forms and start collecting actionable marketing data right away!

All you have to do is provide your Google Analytics ID in the web form creation form (pardon the unavoidable pun). If the form is published on your site and you already use Google Analytics, events and goals will be auto-registered.

5. Callback option

Now, this is golden! If you want to get your sales reps working on a client immediately after a web form has been submitted, just include the callback option in this form.
This way, your clients will get a chance to get in touch with your business instantly thus increasing your chances for a successful deal.

Conclusion

This was a quick roundup of the most effective ways to work with Bitrix24 CRM web forms. We hope you will find this information useful and give some (or all) of our tips a try. Trust us - if they have already worked for 500,000+ of our clients, they will work for your business as well.

If you haven’t tried Bitrix24 yet, well, lucky you! There’s so much good stuff we have in store for you - just get our free version, which will give you access to all of the CRM web form features we’ve mentioned here in this article. Good luck!