This blog post is sponsored by Formidable Forms which is owned by Strategy11. Everything I say in this post is my own opinion. All the links that Formidable Forms asked to be included have been marked as a sponsored link. There may be more article’s like this in the future but I will continue to provide a disclosure similar to this every time.
We have all experienced boring forms online, the forms that have no personality and all the questions are similar. If you haven’t experienced these type of boring forms then consider yourself lucky. Some companies decide to go all out when creating forms, by including many images, wording the questions in a certain way, have multiple choice, having open ended questions, and making the form as easy to use as possible. Should these things be used in forms and how do they affect the results?
Before you use an image you have to get the copyright for it, or use an image that is in the public domain. You can’t just use any image you find online, as every image is copyright by the person (or company) who creates it by default. There are many sites that you can get images where you can use for free and there are many sites which you can pay for images (like DepositPhotos (affiliate link)). It may take time to find the right image for your needs but that time will be worth it in the end.
If you decide to use a public domain image, or an image from one of the other sites mentioned then you will find other sites use the same images. This isn’t nice if you are trying to be unique, but it does save you money from having to create your own images with a professional photographer.
Images don’t just have to be used at the beginning or end of the form, they could be used instead of things like radio buttons or even checkboxes. This could allow the person completing the form to select an image instead of just text. The use case is different for each business and the form they are putting out.
Images can also be used to lessen the chance that bots will complete and send out the form, if you use some sort of image captcha then bots have a harder time filling it in (compared to if you used a regular captcha). If you are looking for this then look for image captcha as a feature, as an example JotForm has JotCaptcha and WordPress has a image captcha plugin.
Before you add images you may want to think about those who have vision issues, if someone can’t fully see the image then that will affect the results of the form. You could do alternative text underneath the image saying what the image show so the results are more accurate.
One major disadvantage of having images on your form is that the form will take longer to load. There are numerous things you can do to make the images and form load faster. Such as compressing the images before putting them into the form, you can do that by using Compressor.io or a WordPress image compressor plugin (affiliate link).
If you believe you should put images in your form then you can do that with many form options including Formidable Forms (sponsored), WPForms (affiliate link), JotForm, and POWr.
