Top uses for online forms across type and industry

There are probably as many uses for online forms as there are stars in the sky (well, maybe not quite that many).

Even with so many forms — and form needs — some familiar patterns emerge when it comes to the kinds of forms that are most heavily used and the industries that use them.

Let’s dig into the form types first so you have a better idea how to maximize them to work for you and your goals.

Top form uses

Order forms

From products and work orders to food and subscriptions, millions of users meet their needs with Jotform’s online order forms. All forms are protected by industry-leading security, and there are over 900 free order form templates to customize.

Those who need flexibility can use the Product List element to delineate and automate quantity, criteria, and product choice. Users can also configure/add tax, discounts, and shipping fees to forms.

Registration forms

Users streamline planning for conferences, workshops, schools, sporting events, and business events with our online registration forms. They use integrations to port their registrations over to CRM solutions like HubSpot, collaboration tools like Airtable, and cloud storage platforms like Google Drive and Dropbox.

There are over 1,000 registration form templates to use as is or to customize. Plus, you can collect registration fees through registration forms.

Appointment forms

Healthcare practices, spas and beauty salons, photographers, and personal service providers (to name a few) use our drag-and-drop online appointment forms to simplify scheduling.

Users can share appointment forms by embedding them on their website, posting on their socials, using a QR code, or creating their own branded app. Appointment setting solutions like Calendly help sync availability. And your customers — who often make appointments on the go — can conveniently make a request from their smartphone, tablet, or desktop computer.

Survey forms

Educational institutions, healthcare practices, and HR are big cohorts within Jotform. All three depend on surveys for quizzes, teacher/parent satisfaction, district engagement, HIPAA-friendly medical history assessments, patient wellness, job satisfaction, company culture, and more.

Users employ best-in-class conditional logic to create more complex surveys that show/hide questions based on previous responses. Combined with Jotform’s 1,000+ free templates, it’s why users depend on our surveys.

Payment forms

Users collect payments for orders, donations, subscriptions, and business and personal services securely using payment collection forms.

The ability to connect to over 30 payment gateways like Square and Stripe — and enhance conversion rates by giving customers/donors their choice of payment method (credit card, ApplePay, CashApp, etc.) — is a draw for small businesses, nonprofits, and entrepreneurs.

Job application forms

A good job application saves your organization time and money. While a variety of form fields can help users properly screen candidates, what stands out is the ability to automate communication and internal workflows.

For instance, users set up email notifications to notify relevant stakeholders when an application comes in and/or passes initial screening. And as candidates move through the hiring process, an automated approval process can work in parallel from beginning to end, concluding either with an offer letter or a polite denial.

Contract management forms

A growing number of users leverage Jotform for contract sign-offs, invoice generation, or incoming work requests because of the mobile-friendly feature offering.

Jotform Sign allows contractors to capture e-signatures complete with digital audit trails. It’s also possible to collect data offline, which comes in handy when customers need to review and sign contracts in the field. Form widgets like Terms & Conditions and PDF Embedder can eliminate even more paper. Plus, form responses are automatically sent to project management solutions, spreadsheets, or Jotform Tables.

Top industry uses

Education

In the education industry, administrators need to send online forms and approvals for pay raises, resource requisitions, alumni and departmental surveys, policy approvals, conference registrations, and so on. Educators’ uses range from testing and student surveys to extracurricular event signups and parental approvals.

Interconnectivity tip: Read how a dissertation consulting firm used Jotform’s kiosk mode and touchless kiosk to collect new client leads at marketing events. Perfect for administrators and other education stakeholders who need an event registration solution.

Nonprofit

Often, nonprofits deal with limited resources and not enough bandwidth. They need streamlined and dependable workflow solutions that reduce manual work and automate delivery to third-party tools, without breaking the bank. As a result, nonprofit personnel love Jotform for simplifying donations while helping them build community support.

Interconnectivity tip: Connect your forms using our integrations to scale database and participant management like this U.K. charity did with Salesforce.

Healthcare

Healthcare providers need to comply with regulations like HIPAA when collecting patient information digitally. They look to Jotform to create HIPAA-friendly forms as an alternative to the expense and time of having IT professionals build a system for them.

Interconnectivity tip: Use patient satisfaction surveys and view your collected data in Jotform Tables to understand the impact of the service you provide. Read how the CEO of a healthcare provider proved its ROI with Jotform Enterprise.

Human resources

Everyone, from startups with a handful of employees to enterprise organizations made up of thousands, uses Jotform to automate HR workflows, both for job candidates and existing employees. Jotform simplifies the collection and management of job applications, employee information requests and surveys, leave requests, and more.

Interconnectivity tip: Use online approvals and third-party integrations to automate HR workflows and streamline your business operations like Horatio.

Event planning

Events encompass everything from youth sports to church get-togethers to formal event planning. Organizers use sophisticated online registration forms, feedback surveys, and features like kiosk mode to check in people for events.  They also use Jotform Tables to manage guest lists and schedules, and organize collected assets like pictures, media files, and more.

Interconnectivity tip: Read how Dream on 3 digitized its registration and application forms — and how its applicants used the “save and continue later” form feature — to make the dream event process easier and more efficient.

Real estate

Landlords often use a payment form that integrates with their preferred payment provider or ACH to collect recurring rent payments from tenants. For others, like mortgage industry stakeholders, simply being able to efficiently pass leads from one database to another makes a big difference in the bottom line.

Interconnectivity tip: Improve your lead or application process by streamlining data from mortgage partners at scale. The home loan readiness company Uqual enabled faster data transfer with Jotform, improving business outcomes for the organization and its customers.

Conclusion

If you’d like to learn more about form types, form basics, and all the cool features you can use to get the most out of your forms, check out the Jotform Academy video course program. You’ll learn about Jotform from the experts who built it. This program even grants a certificate you can share on social media.

Additionally, we have a whole library of webinars and how tos you can access at any time.