Is the best WordPress form builder plugin Gravity Forms?

The best WordPress form builder plugin has to be Gravity Forms – at least we think so!

Out of all the form builder plugins available, it’s one we use across most of our websites and for us, it takes the top spot for several reasons.

Firstly, it allows us at its most basic level, to quickly and easily create a simple WordPress form that is both aesthetically pleasing and functional. Secondly, it saves our clients time and money by eliminating the need for a custom form solution. And finally, it provides an easy way for schools and businesses to gather data from their users to manipulate as they see fit. But there’s so much more to Gravity Forms than just a basic contact form. To find out why we think it’s the best WordPress form plugin, read on…

Gravity Forms is a powerful way to gather information from your website’s visitors

Integrating it into a website’s design is a great way to streamline the process of collecting information from website visitors. It can be used to create simple contact forms to gather personal information, generate product enquiries and create surveys, quizzes and polls to name a few. With Gravity Forms’ advanced features, website owners can customise advanced forms however they like. Not only does this increase website functionality, but also helps website owners manage their data better and improves the user experience for website visitors. So what are some of the key features we love so much?

Drag-and-Drop Builder

You can easily create and manage forms with an intuitive drag-and-drop interface. Within 5 minutes, you can be receiving form submissions and have unlimited forms ready to go on your website.

Conditional Logic – it’s logical!

This makes it easy to create complex forms with dynamic content, powered by rules you set up yourself. As an example, on a school’s contact page, they are unlikely to want to publish all of the teacher’s email addresses but still wish for parents to contact them directly. A conditional logic contact form will allow the user to select the name of the teacher from a drop-down menu and when the form is submitted, it will be routed to that particular teacher without an email address ever being exposed. A more advanced use would be on a product page, where the user selects an option to purchase an item and upon certain selections, other options fields will appear based on what they choose previously.

Multi-Page Forms

Set up multi-page forms on your WordPress site that allows a user to save their progress for completion later. This can be used for a multitude of different applications but one of our favourites is for school admission forms. Having automated this process for several of our clients, we are proud to say it removes a significant proportion of man-hours (and stress) from the admin team, who would normally have to manually input thousands of fields of data into a spreadsheet, from all the applications they receive each year. The simplicity of our multi-page forms enables them to export the information to a CSV file, ready to be imported elsewhere. A key factor in making multi-page forms more user-friendly and accessible is by breaking them down into more manageable chunks and Gravity Forms does this perfectly by using pagination which means a lot less scrolling for the user.

Come back later

Continuing on the theme of these long old muli-page forms, have you ever been filling out a form online and wondered if it will ever end? Not any more – Gravity Forms allows your users to simply save all the information they have entered so far and come back to it when they’re mentally recharged to attack it once more!

Partial Entries

Website owners can capture data from users who partially complete a form on their website but then abort the process halfway through. Perfect for those follow-up emails with a juicy discount to encourage them to complete the transaction, therefore maximising any sales opportunity.

Digital Signatures

Enables users to sign a form once completed. We have successfully used this for the signing of financial application forms online and have also used the functionality in schools where there is a requirement for parents to sign the online Home/School Agreement forms.

Integration with Payment Processors

Gravity Forms easily allows you to process secure payments quickly, with its seamless integration of Stripe, PayPal or many other leading payment gateways. Not only this but it can also handle automated payments, enabling you to set up subscriptions and recurring payments through your existing payment gateway.

Creating custom blog posts

Possibly one of our favourite features! Gravity Forms can enable users of your website to add blog posts or news items to your website quickly and efficiently without ever seeing the back end of the website. Of course, nothing would ever be published directly to the website without moderation first and Gravity Forms will notify administrators that there is a new post sitting in drafts, ready to be published. At the click of a button, the moderator can either publish the post to the website or send it back to the creator for further input. We have used this solution countless times in schools where the staff or students can submit news articles, book reviews, short stories or photo galleries (yes, you can even use it to upload images, that will embed in the post and/or be used as the featured image!).

These features make Gravity Forms the ideal choice for any website looking to quickly and easily create powerful solutions for a multitude of applications. Above are just a few of our favourite features but if that’s not satiated your thirst, just wait until we tell you about Gravity Kit – it’s like strapping raw chicken to your feet and going skating naked at Winter Wonderland! Keep your eyes peeled, will chat about that in more detail in a future blog post.

Conclusion

If you’re looking for a way to gather information from your website’s visitors, Gravity Forms is one of the best WordPress form builder plugins out there. It’s easy to use and set up, and it integrates effortlessly with your existing web design. But if you need something more powerful, the ability of this form builder plugin to evolve into something bespoke and extremely advanced is second to none, which is why it’s one of our favourite utilities and we wouldn’t go to work without it!

Wondering how Lemongrass Media and Gravity Forms can work together to elevate your website? Give us a call today on 0800 690 6250 or drop us an email to enquiries@lemongrassmedia.co.uk, we’d love to hear from you!