Think about the traffic that lands on your website for the first time.
In most cases, people don’t just wander into your online store “off the street.” And whatever method you used to draw them in, it probably wasn’t cheap.
According to Klaviyo’s recent marketing mix report, paid advertising—the primary method of driving new customers to your website—continues to eat up marketing dollars: Across all business segments, paid social and paid search consistently earn the largest average portion of marketing budgets.
And even if you’re driving most of your web traffic from organic search or social, “there is always a cost associated with getting those people onto your site,” points out Jacob Sappington, director of strategy at ecommerce growth marketing agency Homestead Studio.
That could mean:
- The immediate cost of paying an ad that gets someone onto your site
- The human cost of creating the content that you post on Instagram, YouTube, or TikTok that drives someone to your site
- The time cost of all of the above
Moral of the story: Once you’ve paid for someone’s attention, “if you’re relying on them coming back to you through their own just thinking about you, you’re going to struggle with that,” Sappington says. “You absolutely should be concerned about being able to communicate with those users whenever you want to.”
You can do this by gathering contact information for your owned marketing channels—and that’s exactly what an on-site sign-up form helps you accomplish.
According to Ben Zettler, founder at digital marketing and ecommerce agency Zettler Digital, “if you don’t have a sign-up form that converts a user—gets someone to actually sign up for your list—generating real revenue out of your owned marketing program is going to be a challenge.”
In other words, by feeding your email and SMS marketing lists, sign-up forms have the power to transform casual website visitors into engaged listeners and, ultimately, loyal customers.
But how do you use sign-up forms to collect useful information from your customers—without turning them off?
What is a sign-up form?
A sign-up form is a pop-up, web page, or modal with input fields that collect information from your website visitors.
You can use a sign-up form to collect contact information, like an email address and phone number, as well as other personal information, like names, birthdays, and product preferences.
Your sign-up form is essentially the pick-up line of your website: Its goal is to charm your customers into continuing a relationship with your brand.
A form might seem like a small part of your ecommerce marketing plan, but it’s a budget-friendly way to encourage people to opt in to messages directly from your brand—future communication over owned channels that builds loyalty, inspires purchases, and more.
The 4 main types of sign-up forms
Not all sign-up forms are created equal. According to a recent analysis of Klaviyo brands, full-page email sign-up forms tend to outperform other types of email sign-up forms, followed by email pop-up forms, fly-out forms, and embedded forms.
But take that conclusion with a grain of salt: None of the average differences in our analysis reached the level of statistical significance.
What does this mean for you? Testing is going to be the best bet to find what works for your unique brand.
For SMS sign-up forms, meanwhile, embedded forms tend to outperform other types of sign-up forms—but, again, not at a level of statistical significance:
If you’re asking which sign-up form is “best,” then, the frustrating answer is: It depends. Here, we break down the pros and cons of the 4 main types of sign-up forms so you can decide which might make the most sense for your business.
1. Full-screen forms
Full-screen forms display over the entire browser window, capturing your shoppers’ attention. In order to continue browsing, a user must interact with the form by either Xing out of it or submitting their information.
Source: Klaviyo
It’s perhaps no surprise, then, that full-screen forms tend to earn the highest performance rates out of all sign-up forms. Think about it this way: The more obvious the form, the more likely people are to notice it. As long as the offer is relevant and appealing to the customer, that means they’re also more likely to fill it out.
Does that also mean every form you add to your online store should be a full-screen form? Probably not. These forms may perform well because they’re difficult to overlook, but they’re also the most intrusive of all the sign-up form types.
2. Pop-up forms
Pop-up forms, which appear in the middle of the browser’s window, are slightly less disruptive than full-screen forms. They’re the most commonly used type of form, according to Klaviyo’s data—perhaps because they provide the best of both worlds.
Typically, with a pop-up form, the web visitor can still see the rest of the website in the background of the pop-up, and may even be able to click back to their browsing experience without interacting with the form.
Check out how prominently home decor brand Lust Home displays their pop-up form on their homepage: