Optimize your forms for better UX and more conversions

Online course:
Form optimization

By Tom New,

Head of Creative Marketing @ Peak

Course length: 6h 30min

Sign up now

English subtitles Certificate included

Some of the companies that train their teams at CXL:


Design forms that are easy to complete and have sky-high conversion rates.

Optimizing your forms can have a huge impact on your conversion rates. This course will teach you how to avoid the common pitfalls of form design so you’re always getting the best conversion rate possible.

After taking this course, you’ll…

  • Know how to design high performing forms.
  • Be able to leverage user feedback and optimize based on user interaction.
  • Recover buckets of revenue and decrease cart abandonment.
  • Design for mobile, usability, accessibility, and improved user experience.

Tom combines a wealth of data and experience to give his advice on all the various elements that make up a form: from labels to validation to use of captcha. In just three classes you have a long list of potential tests and optimisations no matter what type of form you have.

Daphne Tideman, Head of Growth Consultancy @ RockBoost

Optimize closest to the money (or why you should care about forms)

At the bottom of almost every website experience lies a web form.

Web forms are used to convert visitors into subscribers, leads, customers, or advocates. They represent the closest element to the conversions – they’re already ready to fill out their information. Yet for some reason, research shows that almost 70% of people don’t complete online forms.

What would it mean for your business if you could recover just 5% of those conversions? 10%? Depending on your conversion value, that’s a whole lot of ROI for what amounts to be a surprisingly little amount of work.

Pick the low hanging fruit

You see, most forms are so bad that you don’t even need to implement advanced targeting, behavioral science, or any other psychological trickery to get a conversion lift. You simply need to make the form easier to fill out.

Forms are one of the most consistently ill-designed elements on a website, yet most marketers still neglect them. Now, the smart marketer would look at form optimization as a value investment – for very little work, we can achieve clear conversion and revenue lifts.

If ROI is something you’re after, you’ll get a lot from this course.

Form optimization: Recover lost money

A simple funnel analysis will show you that a significant percentage of your users are dropping off when it comes to form completion. What would it mean to you if you could recover even a small percentage of them?

In the case of Pink Gellac, the answer to that question turned out to be a resounding “a lot.”

By making simple changes to their checkout process – things that don’t require weeks of development work or management deliberation – they reduced cart abandonments by 14%. In terms of revenue, that translated to an increase of €5 million over 12 months.

Small changes, big results.

Form design is also eminently teachable. It’s not something that you need a background in data science, engineering, or behavioral science to do right. Simply put in the time, learn the guidelines and processes, and be ready to impress your boss or stakeholders with higher form completion rates, conversion rates, and revenue gains.

To be honest i’ve never realized how important optimizing forms is until learning the course. Most KPI’s are on the form, so it make sense to consider form optimization when optimizing.

Joven Francis Agno, Co-owner @ Dabaweb IT Solutions

This course is right for you if…

  • You have a website that uses forms to generate leads, sales, registrations, or subscribers.
  • You’re dissatisfied with the conversion rate of those forms. You think they could perform better.
  • You have the resources to make changes to your forms.

This course is probably not for you if…

  • Your website doesn’t generate leads or revenue for you. You don’t use forms.
  • You cannot make changes to your site or work with resources to do so (even if you want to!)

Skills you will master

User interactionForm copyForm design best principlesForm optimizationForm design

Tom New

Head of Creative Marketing @ Peak

In 2014 Tom New, along with his business partner Al Mackin, launched Formisimo, a SaaS analytics platform that uses behavioral data to provide market-leading insights into people’s online shopping habits, and in particular how people interact with online forms and checkouts.

Clients include Capital One, DFS, Travelex, Uber, Toyota, Samsung and Unicef and they recently launched their second product, Nudgr, which uses machine learning to predict ahead of time when website visitors are going to abandon a buying journey.

He is the Head of Creative Marketing at Peak.

Your full course curriculum

Form Optimization

1 Form Design Basics and Best Practices

This class will cover form design basics such as layout design, labels, help text, navigation, and calls to action. After this class is finished, you will have a baseline knowledge of web form optimization that surprises 95% of people who create forms

2 Dealing with User Inputs

This class will dive deep into user interaction and how to design based on usability and accessibility. We’ll also dive deep on mobile form optimization, something almost all marketers struggle with. Topics covered: Form validation, error messages, and

3 Real Life Form Optimization: An Interactive Workshop

In this session, we’ll step away from theory and show you specifically and concretely how to execute form design best practices and optimization in real life. To do that, we’ll review three live sites and critique where they’re going wrong, what they c

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  • 7-day no questions asked money back period
  • You can immediately apply learnings and improve your results.

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Learn Form Optimization: FAQ

Who is this course for?

This course is right for you if…

  • You have a website that uses forms to generate leads, sales, registrations, or subscribers.
  • You’re dissatisfied with the conversion rate of those forms. You think they could perform better.
  • You have the resources to make changes to your forms.

Some careers that will especially benefit from this course are CRO specialist, growth marketer, digital marketing manager, demand gen manager, product manager, or SEO specialist.

What will you learn?

After taking this course, you will:

  • Know how to design high performing forms.
  • Be able to leverage user feedback and optimize based on user interaction.
  • Recover buckets of revenue and decrease cart abandonment.
  • Design for mobile, usability, accessibility, and improved user experience.

What does the course include?

Our Form Optimization training includes 3 lessons, 6h 30min of video material, several assignments, and a final exam.

Are subtitles available for the lessons?

Lessons have English subtitles and transcriptions available.

Will I receive a certificate of completion?

After taking this course, you will receive the Form Optimization Certification from CXL, with credentials that you can add to your LinkedIn profile.

What is the refund policy?

All plans come with a 7-day refund period .

How long will it take for me to finish it?

This is entirely up to you – it’s how many study hours per week you can put in. This course is 6h 30min long.