In this video, I will give a quick demonstration of how to use Gravity Forms. I will show you how to access and edit existing forms, add and customize form fields, and configure form settings such as URL redirects and email notifications. Pay attention to the steps and options mentioned as they will help you navigate and utilize Gravity Forms effectively. No action is requested from you in this video.
Video Transcript
0:01 Hello everyone, Toby here from Orbit Media and I'm going to give you a quick demonstration today of how to use gravity forms.
0:09 Using it is pretty straightforward, uh there's just a few things to know. In order to get two gravity forms, you're going to go to forms over here in your sidebar.
0:19 If you don't see this, please let your team know. Once you go to forms, you'll find a list of all of your existing forms on your site and you can edit one of them.
0:30 That clicking edit will take you to this screen where you can edit the form fields uh for the specific form.
0:37 So we have here you can see first name, last name, email, phone, questions and comments and then also the submit button.
0:43 You can Do things like change your submit button text or uh adjust any of the fields. If you want to add fields you'll see this add fields tab over here on the right.
0:54 And this is where you can add various different types of fields to your form. Uh and then you can also rename things uh change the label depending on what types of information you need.
1:04 Down here there's an option to make all of your uh your fields required. Um so once you've got all of your fields the way you want them uh and the way you want the user to interact with them you'll go up here and click save form.
1:16 And there's a- there's a couple more things you need to know. Um so once the form has been saved uh over here under settings you can go to form settings.
1:24 There's not much in here besides uh the title of the form itself. And then if we go to you come.
1:34 You can see most of the time you're going to have a URL redirect that goes to a thank you page.
1:39 I can also come in here and edit this and turn it into like a basic text thank you message if I need to
1:44 Most of your forms will probably use a redirect. Um and then lastly I will go to notifications and this is where all of your information for the admin email is located
1:57 So in this case whenever someone fills out the form it will send a confirmation email to this email address.
2:05 And down here you can see here's the subject uhh and the message of the email and this is uhh these these are basically the dynamic fields that will uhh pull in all of the information based on how the user fills out the form
2:19 And that's it that's really all there is to gravity forms!
- To create & edit forms, go to "Forms" on your sidebar
- In the Gravity Forms dashboard, you should see all of the existing Forms on your site.
- Click the edit icon below your form title to edit, duplicate, preview, and delete your form. You can also view the submissions by selecting "Entries."
- At the top, click “Add New” to create a new form, or duplicate an existing form if you want to copy an existing form's settings. Here you will see the main editing window, where you can control all of the fields and content within the form. Above that window is a drop-down with the following:
- Form Settings allows you to rename your form, create a description, and other adjustments to form appearance.
- Confirmations allows you to set what the visitor will see after they've submitted a form. You can either create a unique message or redirect the form to a thank you page URL (recommended).
- Notifications allows you to determine who is notified when an entry comes in, and what information that person can see in the notification.
- Personal Data is for advanced settings (like saving IP addresses, integrations, etc.).
- Select “Edit” under your form - In this window, you can edit the forms and the submit button on the form.
- Add in the form fields you want from the right sidebar.
- The last field on the form should be the submit button and should contain actionable text, such as “Get in Touch” or “Send my Message.”
- Once desired form fields are added. Click “Save Form.”
How to edit email settings
- Thank You Page Redirect
- In settings tab, select “Confirmations” from the top navigation drop-down - In this window, you can edit the thank you page redirect, email admin, and email user settings for each form
- Default confirmation - Edit this confirmation and select whether you want a success message (Text) or a redirect to a thank you page (Redirect)
- If Text - Enter the success message text
- If Redirect - Enter the full URL for the thank you page
- Save your edits - This action tells Gravity Forms to record the information into its database for future access.
- Admin Notifications
- In settings tab, select “Notifications” from the top navigation drop-down.
- Admin Notification - Edit this to change/update the admin email notification
- SEND TO EMAIL: Should be the email on the admin side who should receive the email notification.
- FROM NAME: Should be the name the user entered in the form fields.
- REPLY TO: Should be the user’s email address that they enter in the email field. You can select this as a merge tag option.
- SUBJECT & MESSAGE: Should contain the information from the form that is relevant to the person receiving the notification. This is the content that will make up the notification email when it is sent to the admin.
How to add a gravity form to a page
- Gutenberg CMS: Once the form is complete, copy the short code and paste into a content editor on the page where you want the form to live.
- Elementor CMS: Load in the desired Form block from the page block library templates, in the form Gravity Form or Form widget, select the from you want to you include and save the page.
Once a form is embedded on a page, it is always best to submit a live test of the form to confirm it works and all settings are correct. Here are the items to test:
- Test with a personal non-work email or a business email from a friend (let them know you're testing)
- Confirm the form is submitted successfully without errors
- Confirm correct fields that should be required are actually required
- Confirm the proper interaction after the form is submitted... ideally the form is redirecting to a unique thank you page URL after submitted with a unique message and details on response times.
- Confirm the email is received by website administrator with all completed form field information and they have appropriate instructions with response times.
- Confirm the form data is saved to the appropriate platform. This could be the WordPress CMS, your ERP, your CRM, email newsletter service, etc.
- Lastly, if this is a brand new form that is intended to convert visitors and is an import metric for reporting to your boss or upper management, that the form is enabled in Google Analytics as a Key Event (see Andy's article on this topic)