Learn about the key features of Sitecore Forms and how it’s a great tool for marketers
More often than not, we come across websites that do not have any form to capture user data. Forms play a significant role and a key part of the funnel that helps to identify an anonymous visitor into a prospective client. Sitecore’s latest form module, ‘Sitecore Forms’ is a great tool for content marketers who use the platform, since it allows you to construct web forms that capture and report information that is provided by those who visit your website.
Using Sitecore Forms application, you can create forms from templates, create new Forms by dragging custom elements from the Form elements pane, apply Form validation or customize Forms with company styling, run reports on Form performance and export data from Forms to Excel.
WFFM vs Sitecore Forms
Web Form for Marketers or WFFM as its called is an effective tool for marketers and is free to use. You can create and publish simple forms within Sitecore using WFFM, which can help to capture valuable visitor information and generate leads - all without a developer’s help. Note: WFFM is supported only till the Sitecore 9 version. It needs to be installed as a Sitecore package and Sitecore 9.0 does not need to be installed separately.
Speaking of benefits, WFFM is a great way to generate leads, since it uses web forms to capture details such as name, email, phone number and location, whenever visitors download a white paper or asset or for that matter, request any information. It provides an easy wizard interface to define form fields with pre-set types, validation rules and save actions that determine what happens when you submit a form. Secondly, Sitecore has a free connector to Microsoft Dynamics CRM. This means that all the data that’s captured from WFFM can be directly saved into Dynamics (XDB). Lastly, with WFFM, it becomes simpler for marketers to gain valuable insight using Sitecore Analytics.
You can:
You can access WFFM reports to analyse interaction of visitors with your website through forms. You can view the Data, Summary, Engagement Analytics, Dropout Report, Usability Report, Save Failure Report in Sitecore or export it to Excel.
To encapsulate, here are a few pros of WFFM:
Coming to Sitecore Forms, while it is quite similar to WFFM, but it comes with the installation of Sitecore, which means one does not need to package explicitly for Sitecore 9 forms. That’s not all - it boasts updated functionality as well with multi-step forms, which is a huge improvement from WFFM.
Speaking of analytics, with Sitecore Forms, the visibility of the performance of your forms is greatly improved as well. Besides form level reporting, you can also report on the performance of individual fields. It is simpler to identify any fields that are causing a higher than average drop-off or what is taking users longer to fill in - this was earlier done by a third-party tool.
Key features of Sitecore 9 Forms
How to create Sitecore Form from the dashboard
1.To begin with, you open the Sitecore Forms application from the Sitecore Launchpad. The Sitecore Dashboard gives you access to all the forms - those that you have created and also, the available templates. The right pane gives general details about all the forms as well as performance. If you want to create a new form, select Create from the menu.
2. If you want to create a new form from scratch, click Blank Form or select a template to choose from.
Add a form field
It is simple to add a field to a new form just by dragging a form element from the Form Elements pane onto the form canvas. When you place an element as a form field on your form, you can also change its settings on the General Tab in the pane.
1.In the Form Elements pane, go over to the element that you want to add and then drag it to the form canvas.
2.Next, when you find the right place for your element and a green line appears, drop the element.
3. If you want to change the settings of a new field, click the field on the canvas and make changes in the Form Elements pane.
4.When you are done changing the settings, click Apply to see the changes on the Form.
5.To add a list to your form, go over to the Form Elements pane and in the Lists section, drag the Dropdown list to the form.
6.In the Details section, you can add list items.
Always add a Field name, since it is the actual item name for the Sitecore definition item for the form field. When you give form elements meaningful names, it helps to distinguish them during tracking.
7.If you want to add a Submit button on your form, go over to the Form elements pane and in the Structure section, drag the Submit button element to the form.
8.In the Details section, write a name for your button and go over to the Navigation step field and select Submit.
9. Lastly, click Apply to see changes on the form.
10. To save your form, click Save to save and name the new form. Click on Save the selected form to save and name a copy of the form. Lastly, if you want to save the form as a template, click Save the form as a form template.
How is data saved in XDB?
The Sitecore Experience Database can be looked at as a big data marketing repository that collects and utilises customer interactions to create a comprehensive and a single-view of each individual customer. With XDB, it becomes easier for marketers to get a holistic view of the customer not just from your website, but also external apps, channels and devices. You can configure properties to determine whether the data of a form or field is saved in xDB or a custom SQL server database, primarily for security reasons.
WFFM data Storage and Export
1.In the content tree, navigate to the sitecore/System/Modules/Web Form For Marketers/Website Folder.
2. Select the relevant form or field item, and in the right pane.
For Form items, in the submit section, select save form data to storage.
There are two tables:
FieldData - Here you can see actual posted data with the field name, value and field type.
FormEntry - Here you can find the relationship between FieldData and FormId.
Data stored for selected WFFM form can be also exported directly from the Sitecore Content Tree.
3.To avoid data redundancy and to keep personal data in xDB only, you can disable “Save Form Data To Storage” checkbox in WFFM form item and consider saving the data directly to Contact entity in xDB. There is a built-in “Update Contact Details” action, which maps form fields to contact’s facets. This only works for users who’ve logged in.
Sitecore 9 Data Storage and Export
In the Sitecore 9 Forms editor, you can control if the data will be saved to the database by adding the ‘Save Data’ submit action to your submit button. Besides, in the field settings, you can also take a call if a single form field must be saved to the database. This is especially helpful if you do not want to store important data outside xDB, but still persist different parts of the form. That’s not all - you can also export form data from the form app module.
Instead of saving personal data to Forms database, you should consider storing it in xDB through xConnect.
How to Create a Submit Action Item
1. Go over to /sitecore/system/Settings/Forms/Submit Actions
2. Right-click Submit Actions, click Insert, and click Insert from template.
3. Select the /System/Forms/Submit Action template, in the Item Name field, enter the name Update Contact Details and press Insert.
4. Go to the item you just created and in the Settings section, in the Model Type field, set the value to the class type name.
5. In the Error Message field, enter an error message.
6. In the Editor field, select the editor that you just created.
7. In the Appearance section, select the icon that you want to display in the Form elements pane.
In the Form elements pane, when you click Add a submit action, you can now select the Update Contact Details action.
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