Umbraco Forms: Everything you need to know

Having a robust, dynamic CMS is the first step of the journey in connecting with your customers and prospects; gathering information about them is the next stage and by building forms within a CMS you can gain valuable insights to help improve their user experience and turn them into leads. Thanks to Umbraco’s flexible CMS, there is a straightforward way to create simple, responsive, successful forms to collect meaningful data to benefit your business.

In true Umbraco style, Umbraco Forms calls itself the “friendliest forms builder” – with good reason, we think! Umbraco Form builder is an easy-to-use forms creator which allows users to create bespoke questionnaires and secure sign-up forms. If you would like to find out more about Umbraco Forms, contact Yoyo today, we’re an Umbraco agency who specialise in all things Umbraco when it comes to web development.

In this blog, we’ll take a closer look at some of the features and benefits of Umbraco Forms, what it can be used for - and how it integrates with 3rd party services such as Salesforce and Mailchimp.

What is Umbraco Forms?

Available directly through Umbraco HQ’s Apps, Umbraco Forms is a straightforward, non-technical way to integrate any type of form seamlessly into your Umbraco website so you can collect whatever data is important to you.

From a basic contact or newsletter sign-up form to a more advanced multi-step questionnaire, Umbraco Forms’ intuitive interface provides content editors with an easy way to create robust forms of any type in Umbraco to receive valuable and insightful customer data, without the need for complicated coding or technical knowledge.

Why consider using Umbraco Forms?

Umbraco Forms has multiple benefits and offers users an intuitive, integrated and simple solution to connecting with their users, visitors and prospects. As with Umbraco CMS, because of its fully extendable API, developers can use and adapt Umbraco Forms to work in any way they wish, without being locked into a ‘one size fits all’ product.

Let’s look at some of Umbraco Forms’ other benefits:

Responsive Form Builder.: The friendly and intuitive user interface in Forms gives content editors the capability of creating robust forms, without even needing developer support, while its user-friendly Content Editor Tool enables you to see the form visually as you create it with a simple drag and drop layout to add the settings required for each text box.
Simple process construction.: With simplicity at its core, Umbraco Forms helps to create an intuitive user workflow and form a journey, so all the necessary actions are executed when the form is submitted. For instance, users can create validation rules and be able to create conditions, such as “only show this field if the visitor answered ‘no’”.
Reporting.: Once that all-important data has been gathered, Umbraco Forms’ built-in reporting tool enables users to analyse it, to fully understand the engagement around the form - or simply to download it for more advanced sharing and processing within Microsoft Excel or Google Spreadsheets.
Cost.: Rather than pay an ongoing, costly monthly subscription for an additional 3rd party form-building service, such as Typeform or Survey Monkey, Umbraco Forms has a one-off fee of £170. It can also be trialled for free for 14 days, giving clients an opportunity to see how it all works without any upfront commitment – and can be used completely free of charge with an Umbraco Cloud account.
Unlimited forms.: Once the one-off fee is paid, the creative and technical opportunities within Forms are unlimited.
Integration.: Umbraco Forms integrates seamlessly, with all functionality accessed within Umbraco’s CMS. Not only does it mean visitors needn’t leave the site, it also gives developers full control over design mark-up, so forms and questionnaires will look consistent with the site’s design (great for maintaining your branding) – as well as making it intuitive and simple for content editors to construct dynamic, responsive forms from within their website.

The type of forms that Umbraco Forms makes easier to create.

Whether you’re looking to create a contact or newsletter sign-up form, gather simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answers in a poll – or you’re hoping to gain deeper insight into your website visitors or customers from a more detailed questionnaire, Umbraco Forms has a range of options and features to help create intuitive and responsive forms without the need for complex coding.

Responsive Form Builder.: The friendly and intuitive user interface in Forms gives content editors the capability of creating robust forms, without even needing developer support, while its user-friendly Content Editor Tool enables you to see the form visually as you create it with a simple drag and drop layout to add the settings required for each text box.
Simple process construction.: With simplicity at its core, Umbraco Forms helps to create an intuitive user workflow and form a journey, so all the necessary actions are executed when the form is submitted. For instance, users can create validation rules and be able to create conditions, such as “only show this field if the visitor answered ‘no’”.
Reporting.: Once that all-important data has been gathered, Umbraco Forms’ built-in reporting tool enables users to analyse it, to fully understand the engagement around the form - or simply to download it for more advanced sharing and processing within Microsoft Excel or Google Spreadsheets.
Cost.: Rather than pay an ongoing, costly monthly subscription for an additional 3rd party form-building service, such as Typeform or Survey Monkey, Umbraco Forms has a one-off fee of £170. It can also be trialled for free for 14 days, giving clients an opportunity to see how it all works without any upfront commitment – and can be used completely free of charge with an Umbraco Cloud account.
Unlimited forms.: Once the one-off fee is paid, the creative and technical opportunities within Forms are unlimited.
Integration.: Umbraco Forms integrates seamlessly, with all functionality accessed within Umbraco’s CMS. Not only does it mean visitors needn’t leave the site, it also gives developers full control over design mark-up, so forms and questionnaires will look consistent with the site’s design (great for maintaining your branding) – as well as making it intuitive and simple for content editors to construct dynamic, responsive forms from within their website.

What 3rd party services can Umbraco Forms work with?

Many businesses will want to connect web capture forms to other business tools and platforms – a CRM platform such as Salesforce, an automation tool like Zapier – even Excel spreadsheets, but, in practice, this is a complex process if the right web form builder isn’t in place.

Umbraco Forms is built into Umbraco CMS itself and is designed to work within Umbraco’s highly flexible and customisable workflows, allowing it to integrate seamlessly with 3rd party services, so users can send emails, update web services, save in CRM systems, and more. This gives users complete ownership and control of their data by building forms that connect directly with the CMS.

Umbraco Forms will connect to a customer relationship management (CRM) system such as Salesforce or Adobe. This helps businesses to track and analyse the interactions that prospects and customers are making through the website, so they can improve customer engagement and eventually increase sales and leads.

Email marketing remains one of the most powerful tools for website owners and thanks to an Umbraco plugin, it’s straightforward to integrate a website newsletter subscribe form with 3rd party email software, such as MailChimp, giving businesses a simple way to contact readers and connect with customers on a regular basis.

Automation workflow software, such as Zapier, provides websites with “if this, then that” tools which can be used when a new form entry is submitted via Umbraco Forms without the need for additional code. This enables marketers and editors to make automated workflows that pass data between the web apps they use without having to involve a developer.

Conclusion

Whether you’re redesigning your website or developing an online presence from scratch, web forms are an essential part of building essential interaction and communication with your users. Umbraco Forms is simple to set up and gives businesses the freedom to create and manage fully customisable forms to gather key information and form compelling insights.

Let’s look at some of Umbraco Forms’ other benefits:

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