Do you want to create a popup form for your WordPress site?
Using popup forms is an excellent strategy for grabbing the attention of your visitors and collecting more leads.
If you have the right tools, you can easily create custom popup forms in WordPress without
In this article, we’ll show you how to easily create a WordPress popup form for your website without having to write any code.
In This Article
Create Your WordPress Popup Form Now
Why Use a WordPress Popup Form?
It’s a smart idea for small business owners to put contact forms not just on your Contact Us page, but in a WordPress popup as well. That’s because you can give your readers a quick way to reach you without navigating away from the page that they’re on.
Plus, you can also use a WordPress popup contact form for:
- Feedback — Gather feedback by asking for comments or even creating a survey.
- Subscription — Build your email newsletter list by making it easy to subscribe with the click of a link.
- Appointments — Enable users to schedule a call or appointment.
So now that you know why you want to use a WordPress popup form, let’s jump into exactly how to make one!
How to Create a WordPress Popup Form
There are a few ways you can create a popup form for your WordPress site. We’ll show you two different but easy ways.
In the first method, we’ll use a SaaS platform (OptinMonster), which integrates perfectly with WordPress to create popup forms.
The second method involves plugins that are purely native to WordPress, so you can perform all the steps without having to leave your main WordPress dashboard.
It’s entirely up to you which method you want to use. We’ve tested both methods, and they work flawlessly for popup form creation.
Method#1: Creating a Popup Form With OptinMonster + WPForms
In this method, we’ll use OptinMonster to create a popup form campaign and then use WPForms to customize the fields within the popup form.
Let’s jump into it.
Install OptinMonster
OptinMonster is a SaaS service offering conversion optimization tools. Although a SaaS service, OptinMonster integrates smoothly with WordPress sites via its plugin.
In fact, you can download the OptinMonster plugin for free and build up to 3 campaigns with a total limit of 300 campaign impressions per month without signing up for the paid license.
This is perfect for setting up your first WordPress popup window.
If you don’t know how to install a WordPress plugin, here are the instructions for adding OptinMonster to your WordPress site.
Later on, you’d probably like to remove the limitations of the free version. Thankfully, you can upgrade to OptinMonster paid license starting at just $9/month.
When you’ve set up OptinMonster for your WordPress site, it’s time to move on to the next step.
Install WPForms
It’s possible to create a simple popup form with OptinMonster alone. However, we recommend using WPForms with OptinMonster because this combination opens up a whole new range of customization options for your popup forms.
To get started, purchase a WPForms license that works for you. We recommend WPForms Pro if you’d like to create survey forms and unlock a host of advanced functionalities.
After purchasing a license, go ahead and install WPForms on your site.
Create a Form Using WPForms
Once WPForms is activated, you can immediately start creating forms from your WordPress dashboard.
To start, go to WPForms » Add New.
You should now see the form setup screen where you can name your form and choose a template for it.
For this example, we’ll use the Simple Contact Form template. Press the Use Template button under it to continue.
WPForms will quickly load your selected template and take you to the form builder screen. The Simple Contact Form template includes the Name, Email, and Paragraph Text fields.
It’s a good idea to keep your popup form as short and simple as possible to maximize conversions. But you can edit this template and change fields if you’d like.
When you’re happy with how your form looks, go ahead and press Save.
Great job! Your form is now ready. But in order to display it as a popup on your site, we’re going to need some help from OptinMonster as we show in the steps below.
Create a Popup Form Campaign Using OptinMonster
After saving your form, go back to your WordPress dashboard. Then, click on OptinMonster » Campaigns from your WordPress sidebar menu.
Here, click on the Create Your First Campaign button.
OptinMonster offers lots of different campaign types. Select Popup as your campaign type.
After that, scroll down and choose a template from the available options. Simply hover your cursor over a template and press the Use Template button.
OptinMonster will prompt you to give a name to your campaign. Enter a name and press the Start Building button to proceed.
Now, you’ll find yourself on the OptinMonster campaign builder screen, with your selected template loaded.
As you can see, this template is great for capturing name and email information from your customers. If this is what you’d like, you can publish this popup campaign as is without adding the WPForms block.
But if you’d like to include more advanced fields such as a rating field to quickly gather user feedback or simply a text box that can accept comments from users, then WPForms can help you with that.
In the previous step, we used WPForms to create a simple contact form that includes a text box field in addition to the name and email fields. Now, we can simply recall that form to the OptinMonster popup form campaign.
Let’s first edit the popup header to include useful directions for visitors seeing the popup form. Just click on the header text, and type in any message you want.
Since we want to include a form we created separately with WPForms here, we’re going to delete the pre-existing optin fields from this popup campaign. You can delete any element from your campaign by hovering your cursor over it and clicking on the Trash icon.
Now, we can drag and drop the WPForms block right under the campaign header.
Click on the WPForms block after you’ve added it to the campaign. This will open settings where you can select any form created with WPForms to embed in your campaign.
Click the Form Selection dropdown on the left-hand pane of the campaign builder, which will open a list of all the forms you’ve previously created with WPForms. Select a form that you’d like to embed in the popup campaign.
Awesome! We’re almost done creating a WordPress popup form using the first method.
Preview and Publish Your WordPress Popup Form
Because OptinMonster uses shortcodes to embed forms made with WPForms, you can’t immediately see a live preview of your form within the popup form campaign.
But you can preview it right before you publish it. To do that, click on the Publish button on the navigation bar at the top.
On this screen, there’s a preview button. Clicking the Preview button will take you to your site’s frontend where the form will pop up on your screen, just like it would for your visitors.
Now OptinMonster will trigger your WordPress popup form on page load. Here’s how it looks in our example:
The preview gives you an opportunity to double-check everything before you’re ready to publish the campaign.
Once you’re happy with how the popup form looks, go ahead and press the Publish button under Publish Status.
Great! Your campaign is now live. The popup form will now appear for all users visiting your site.
If you want, you can also change the display rules for your WordPress popup form.
Go back to OptinMonster » Campaigns. Find the campaign you just created and hover your cursor over it. Then, click on the Output Settings option.
Here, you can change the visibility of the campaign and set it to be visible only to visitors, logged-in users, or both.
You can also exclude this campaign from selected pages or include it to display only on a few specific pages. It’s entirely up to you to decide which pages your popup form should display on.
After changing display rules to your liking, make sure to press the green Save Changes button on the right.
And that’s all you need to do to create a WordPress popup form campaign using OptinMonster and WPForms!
Let’s move on to the next method for achieving the same result.
Method#2: Creating a Popup Form With Popup Maker + WPForms
In the previous method, we used a SaaS service integrated with WordPress to create a popup form campaign. It’s an easy method that should work for all kinds of users.
However, if you’d prefer a solution where you can build a popup form completely from your WordPress dashboard, then the next method is for you.
For this method, we’ll be using two plugins that are completey native to WordPress: Popup Maker and WPForms.
Here’s a video guide walking you through this method on how to add a popup form in WordPress:
For step-by-step written instructions, you can continue reading below:
Install the Needed Popup Form Plugins
To get started, you’ll need to install and activate 2 plugins.
First, you’ll need Popup Maker. Wondering is popup maker free? Yes, you can use the free version for this tutorial and with WPForms.
Click on the blue download button and check out how to install a plugin in WordPress.
Next, you’ll also need the WPForms plugin. Here’s an easy guide on how to install the WPForms plugin.
Create a Simple Contact Form
Next, you’ll want to create the form that you want to put into your WordPress popup form. If you’ve already created a contact form, you can skip this step.
To create your form, go to WPForms » Add New and select a template. For this example, we’ll use a simple contact form. It’s a good idea to keep things simple with WordPress popup forms, so you can maximize your form conversion rates.
Once the form loads, it will have everything you need to get started including:
- First Name
- Last Name
- Comment
You can drag and drop any additional fields you want from the left side to the preview window. You can also remove a field by clicking on it and selecting the red trash icon that appears on the right.
Once you’re done with creating your form, you need to click on the save button to store your changes. Your contact form is now ready to go!
And now that we have a form ready, let’s move on to the next step and create a popup in WordPress.
Create a Popup Using Popup Maker
Great, your plugins are installed and activated. Next, we’ll go into the Popup Maker plugin to create your popup. This free WordPress plugin lets you make popups from scratch, easily.
Head to your WordPress dashboard and go to Popup Maker » Add Popup, and you’ll see the popup editing screen appear.
On this screen, you’ll want to enter a name for your popup. Plus, you can also enter an optional display title as we did in this example. Your visitors will be able to see this optional display title.
And now it’s time to insert your form into your popup. Click on the Add Form button to select your form.
An Insert Form screen will appear. Here, you can pick the form you want to insert into this popup by selecting it from the dropdown menu.
Once the form is selected, click on the blue Add Form button to add it to your popup.
You’ll see a unique shortcode appear which tells that popup which form to use.
Great job. Let’s customize a few of the popup settings by scrolling down and starting with Triggers.
Triggers tell your popup when to open. Click on the blue Add New Trigger button.
On the trigger option window that appears, open the dropdown and select Time Delay/Auto Open. This will trigger the popup to open after your website visitors have been on the page for a set amount of time.
You can set the time for anything you’d like, but we suggest starting with 5 seconds (5,000 milliseconds). When you’re ready, click the Add button to continue.
By default, this popup will show on every page of your WordPress website and to everyone on all devices. You can adjust these settings to target specific people, devices, places (like a post or page), and more under Targeting. In fact, for more advanced settings, check out the Popup Maker documentation.
Next, let’s spruce up the look of your popup by clicking on Display under the popup settings.
From the Popup Theme dropdown, select a theme for your popup.
You can choose whichever Popup Theme you like. For this example, we’re picking the popular Light Box style.
Now, adjust any other settings you’d like and when you’re ready, let’s go ahead and publish your form.
Publish the Popup Form Using Popup Maker
Scroll up on the page to the top and click on the Publish button to make your WordPress popup form live.
And there you have it! You can now preview your WordPress popup form to make sure it looks exactly like you want it to, and adjust the settings accordingly.
To make more contact form popups, you can repeat this process and customize the settings and display rules to appear on different posts or pages, etc. Or you can get creative and make a popup WordPress survey.
Head back to the edit page to keep an eye on the Analytics if you want to know how many people have viewed your WordPress popup form.
Also, if you’ve set up Google Analytics on your website, you can track Popup Maker through custom event tracking.
And don’t forget, you can set up your WordPress popup form to connect directly with your email marketing service to make it even easier to organize and automatically reach out to your new contacts.
Alright, you’re all set. We hope this article helped you to learn how to create a WordPress contact form popup in WordPress.
Next, Make User Submitted Forms
Want to let guest users submit posts on your site from the frontend? WPForms is the best plugin for that! See our guide on allowing user submitted posts on WordPress for details.
There’s a lot more that you can do with WPForms. For instance, you can create a cool WordPress date picker form as shown in the guide.
Create Your WordPress Popup Form Now
Ready to build your form? Get started today with the easiest WordPress form builder plugin. WPForms Pro includes lots of free templates and offers a 14-day money-back guarantee.
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