5 Cool Things You Can Do With The New Web Form Generator

By November 16, 2009

You want to quickly and easily create great-looking signup forms. And you want to do it without having to know HTML.

Makes sense to us. So the new Web Form Generator – coming out soon – aims to help you do exactly that.


Here are just a few ways you’ll be able to customize the look of your forms to build your list faster and create a better new subscriber experience.

Put Your Form Labels Above, Beside or Inside Fields

Want to try putting the “Name” and “Email” labels above the boxes that subscribers fill out, instead of beside them?

Now you can choose how you want your labels aligned:

Web Form Generator

You can even put them inside the boxes if you want to – when subscribers click inside the field, we’ll remove the label so they can type their name/email!

Web Form Generator

Add Color to Your Submit Buttons And Position Them Where You Want

Want your form’s submit button to stand out and beg to be clicked? You got it.

Think that changing the colors and/or the location of it will help you get more conversions? Now you can find out.

Customize the look of your submit button – you can even add gradients to it to make it slicker:

Web Form Generator color picker

and you can place it where you think it’ll get clicked the most – left, center or right:

Web Form Generator in aweber

If you want to get scientific about it, split test the different colors or positions to see what gets you the most new subscribers!

Show Subscribers How to Confirm With Dynamic Thank You Pages

Want to use video on your thank you pages to increase confirmed opt-ins, but don’t have the time or equipment to make it happen?

Use our video thank you pages to give each new subscriber precise instructions on how to confirm.

We’ll even show them exactly what your confirm email looks like in their specific email program (Gmail, AOL, Yahoo, Hotmail, Outlook, Mac Mail, etc).

confirmation email

Collect Addresses With Smart Fields

Need to collect more than just name and email address? How about a postal address?

Now you can easily ask for an address in your forms:

address in web forms

You can then use that data to search and segment your list in AWeber (example: send an email to all of your subscribers in Pennsylvania), or export it so you can build relationships with your subscribers by postal mail.

Automatically Insert a Privacy Policy

We’ve talked before about the merits creating a privacy policy and linking it from your signup form to increase trust, but that’s always been something you had to do on your own.

Now, just tell us to add a privacy policy to your form:

Web Form Generator - Privacy Button

We’ll add a link to a privacy policy we created for AWeber customers to use:

Privacy Policy in web forms

It reaffirms your commitment to delivering email to people who want to get it from you and shows people how easy it is to unsubscribe if they choose to do so.

See the privacy policy.

That’s Not All

There are tons of ways to make your signup forms cooler and more appealing to subscribers (templates, anyone?). These are just a few examples.

What else can you do? You’ll have to try the new Web Form Generator and find out for yourself… 😉

See More About the New Web Form Generator:

  • Why you’ll love it (including a behind-the-scenes video showing the thought that went into building it)
  • How easy it is (including a look at some of the web form templates)

Keep reading:

Design and send emails from anywhere
Tips for creating email sign up forms proven to grow your subscribers
20 Easy ways to get email addresses for your marketing campaigns

Posted By

Justin Premick

Former Director of Educational Products

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46 Comments

  1. John McNally

    11/16/2009 10:10 am

    Looks like very useful software. Can’t wait to have a look at it.
    Keep up the good work.

  2. Allan

    11/16/2009 10:17 am

    Justin:
    We have over 75 Aweber clients in the fitness and health industries. Please tell your design team to create a number of templates for fitness, health club and martial arts facilities!

  3. Lisa Saline

    11/16/2009 10:40 am

    This is a great tool for us to share with our clients and teach our students. Very simple and effective. I look forward to creating new optin pages too.

  4. Tammi Putnam

    11/16/2009 10:41 am

    Love the idea of video instructions on the thank you page….Hey, why didn’t I think of that?!!

    Aweber is always moving me forward in my business.

    Thanks y’all!

  5. Scott

    11/16/2009 11:09 am

    Thank you for making life easier!

  6. Mike

    11/16/2009 11:14 am

    this is great. will we be able to change the form header and footer text color? on my site crosscampusministry.com the words get obscured due to the grey/white font

  7. Bronzi

    11/16/2009 11:15 am

    This is great! Can’t wait to use it. Could use it now for new site.

    Thanks

    Great job!

  8. Holly

    11/16/2009 11:23 am

    Nice. Excellent update to an already incredible service. I’m looking forward to it.

  9. Vince Devereaux

    11/16/2009 11:24 am

    I think this is one of the best ‘new’ Aweber features in years!
    So I’m going to use Aweber more and more…

  10. Andy Burton

    11/16/2009 11:28 am

    Excellent, thankyou for the great service you provide for us

  11. Matthew Smith

    11/16/2009 11:29 am

    Excited to see your new product! Looks fantastic.

  12. Hiram G. Wealth

    11/16/2009 11:30 am

    Our sites will continue to look more professional as you keep upgrading your system for those who are graphically challenged.
    Can’t wait to use it. THANK YOU.

  13. Carol Bentley

    11/16/2009 11:39 am

    Just a thought – and maybe not applicable…

    is it possible to have ‘if/then’ actions on the fields?

    For example: If someone answers ‘Yes’ to a specific question another field displays, if they answer ‘No’ the field does not display.

    Guess I might be getting a bit too ambitious here… but hey, it’s your fault for coming up with such great improvements! 😉

  14. Juan

    11/16/2009 11:41 am

    Can’t wait for the release.

  15. Sean Breslin

    11/16/2009 11:43 am

    Very cool forms… Definately a major improvement!

  16. Johnny Mac

    11/16/2009 12:14 pm

    Awesome !!!! Love it guys

  17. Esti Allina-Turnauer

    11/16/2009 12:17 pm

    This is what I’ve been waiting for! Can’t wait!

  18. Benedick

    11/16/2009 12:35 pm

    Can you make the form modifications so we can use it as a survey – with no sign up to a list, or confirmation just plain simple survey?

  19. Hearh Ferguson

    11/16/2009 12:40 pm

    I love all the improvements you are making. It makes my job easier and the new improvements will allow me to customize the sign up form to look more like the rest of my site. Very cool. Thanks for constantly improving like the rest of us.

  20. JL

    11/16/2009 12:56 pm

    Will there be an option to have subscribers join multiple lists via checkbox opt in

  21. Elliot

    11/16/2009 1:46 pm

    Enough of this -coming out soon- stuff! This is like when you are young and are waiting for a cake to bake, only for your mother to repeatedly say "It’s nearly ready", "Not long now".

    At least give us some idea, you’re killing me;))

  22. Justin Premick

    11/16/2009 1:50 pm

    Thanks all for your enthusiasm! We’re putting the final touches on it and getting ready for the rollout. Exciting times 🙂

    Mike,

    Yes, you’ll be able to change the header and footer colors. Text colors, too. And the color of the form fields. And the submit button. And… well, you get the idea 🙂

    Carol and JL,

    Those aren’t part of this release of the Web Form Generator, but I’ll make sure our Development team sees your comments.

    Benedick,

    Our forms are designed to help you build your list of email subscribers. If you want to run a survey rather than build a list, there are other services that can help you with that:

    http://www.surveygizmo.com/
    http://www.surveymonkey.com/
    http://docs.google.com

  23. Codrut Turcanu

    11/16/2009 2:58 pm

    That’s great news.

    Is this new add-on available for non AW Analytics users?

    Also, wondering what plugins are you using to display headshot avatars…

    Thank you.

  24. Abdul Rehman Mayet

    11/16/2009 4:53 pm

    Looks like some excellent features as you always expect with aweber. Keep up the good work!

  25. Yee Shun Jian

    11/17/2009 12:46 am

    Wow… I’m totally blown away…
    Overdelivery as always =)

  26. Peter O'Rourke

    11/17/2009 3:07 am

    Field names IN fields…. How does this impact validation? I ask only because I’ve seen similar elsewhere and the presence of the field name IN a field is taken as “content” and therefore any validation for blank fields needs to exclude the Field name as a valid entry.

  27. Tom Kulzer (AWeber CEO)

    11/17/2009 10:13 am

    Peter O’Rourke,

    If you add the field names IN fields and use the WFG to make a field required we account for that text and will not accept it unless something else is entered. So yes, we thought of the problem you described and have accounted for it already.

    Likewise, if required is off we accept the submission but strip out the field name and store an empty value. We also support similar functionality for select box “headings”.

  28. Rachel Young

    11/17/2009 10:28 am

    I’m with Alan! Health and fitness templates would be awesome!

    You guys never cease to impress me. No wonder I switched from another email company BACK to y’all! I’ll never stray again! 🙂

  29. Jason

    11/17/2009 11:30 am

    I can’t believe how excited I am for this to come out. I know it will help a lot of us make our sites more visually appealing and functional at the same time! Glad to see the progress and ready for it to start!

  30. MKWeb

    11/17/2009 1:36 pm

    What about the option of embeddibng a graphic instead of or on top of the colors for the forms too?

    I like to use a small image at one of the corners of my forms (Something like a logo) and then have the form background match the background color of the logo image.

    Just my two-bits 🙂

  31. Martin Thompson

    11/17/2009 4:04 pm

    Enough already! Let us at it.

  32. Tom Milone

    11/18/2009 4:47 pm

    I agree… Stop dangling the carrots.. Let us have it already. I could really use it right now.

  33. Julie Templeton

    11/19/2009 12:00 pm

    Wow! Can’t wait. Like the look and i know it will look mighty cool on my sites 🙂

  34. Doug Kercher

    11/22/2009 9:42 am

    Hi Justin

    Every blog nearly has a narrow sidebar, how hard would it be to have a narrow version of a signup form?

    How do you reduce the width of the box/frame please?

    thanks

  35. Timothy Leyfer

    11/23/2009 5:49 pm

    Thank you for providing this great information. I will be uising this new form on all my websites.It seems straight forward and easy to use. Just the sort of thing I am looking for

  36. Glenn

    11/23/2009 6:05 pm

    Looking out for the new tool and can’t wait to try it out. Good work guys, hopefully I am not saying this too prematurely but I am sure once we see it in action we will be all praises.

  37. Robert Sexton

    11/24/2009 9:10 am

    The new form generator looks really good. I have been trying to add text and I guess I am to dumb to figure it out. Once I add the text box it won’t let me type my text in it. Is it just me, am I missing a step?

  38. Brat

    12/1/2009 5:49 am

    Great work. Keep it going!!!

  39. Carole

    12/2/2009 12:59 pm

    I hate it.

    Where are you supposed to put your bonus info – the incentive to get them to sign up?

  40. Teena Hughes

    12/17/2009 5:32 pm

    I have just set up a couple of new forms using the new Webforms and although I was sceptical at first, now I’ve had a play and can see just how much they can be altered to suit whatever I need.

    Hey Carole ‘Where are you supposed to put your bonus info ? the incentive to get them to sign up?’

    You simply click on the little icon beside the header and footer of the form, and type what you like, add images etc – very easy wysiwyg editors.

    I just set up an image button on my site which opens a Lightbox form – very cool 🙂 You can view it top right of the screen here if you like:

    Where are you supposed to put your bonus info ? the incentive to get them to sign up?

    Thanks Aweber! I’m now having fun creating some new web forms 😀

  41. Robby Keller

    5/10/2010 4:24 pm

    This is really helpful. When the opt in form fits with the theme of a website it usually increaseses opt ins and how professional the site looks. With it not matching it can sometimes look trashy. Being able to do this without knowing html is very helpful.

  42. WG Moore

    5/16/2010 10:11 am

    The more I see of the AWeber tools, the more I become convinced that this is the way to go for rapid web development. I will definitely be recommending them to my customers. Thanks again.

  43. Dimitris

    6/23/2010 3:15 pm

    While I really like the templates and the html abilitites, the fact that the "text only" unsubscribe link and notification are added below the form and especially left aligned, is a really big problem for me.

    Most templates and custom mails would most likely be centered and have specific width. This makes the mail look very fastly created and potentially unprofessional.

    I would love to see it work like the address.

    If I manually include it in the template, then not add it again. If I dont, then add it.

  44. LOVE

    10/20/2010 9:05 am

    Wow..this is cool..i cant wait to use this…keep it up!!!

  45. Melissa

    12/22/2010 2:25 am

    Is there a way to create submit buttons that are more dynamic or interactive? Such as when you put the mouse over the button, it changes color, or looks like it’s pressed on or something like that, instead of just having an image as a button without any interactivity?

    I read some information about spit testing that said that changing the color of the button when the mouse is on it, can also increase conversions. That’s why I want to make the button more interactive and not just a simple image. Is there a way to do this?

    Thanks!!

  46. Anthony

    2/28/2011 7:22 pm

    I created a form today and it is working great, just one problem. I was able to change all the colors of the form to match my website except the sign up button. It is odd, the colors I input in the toolbar show up but the button colors don’t change. Is anyone aware of a fix for this.