The Problem with PDF Forms
We have recently worked on a wonderful project for one of our many charity clients. Being a charity that offer many services to it’s clientele, you can imagine they have an abundance of forms for people to fill in.
The Charity in question was currently only allowing users to download a PDF form from their website, fill it in and post it back to them, delaying contact and responses far greater than it needs to be.
We discussed about digitising their PDF Files and creating easy to use, online digital forms for their website that users can fill in and send the form instantly back to the charity.
The charity then gets an email with the whole form responses right to their inbox!
But some forms are huge!
Some of the PDF forms we had to deal with were 4-5 A4 Pages long so we had to device a way to ensure the form didn’t seem like it went on forever and ever to the user.
What we did was implement a Step Form, this is a form where we broke up the form into sections, then once the user fills in one section, the simply click the next button to go to the next section.
Using javascript, we enable the user to bounce back and forth between sections as they please. So if they forgot a section they can easily skip back without losing any progress in the form.
I still like PDF as an option
As we know not everyone likes to fill in digital forms and some people do actually prefer to download the PDF, print it off and fill it in with a Pen.
To cater for these people, we still included the PDF form at the start section, directing users to fill in the digital form or alternatively use the button (we placed on the page) to download the PDF version. Giving the best of both worlds to the users of the website.
Working with Charities
We work with many Charities and we always endeavour to help our Charity clients excel and be at their best digitally, leaving them to focus on the charitable causes they are working towards. We continuously strive to improve the workflow of our Charity clients ensuring they can reach as many people as possible who may be in need, or who wish to support their cause.
