How To Create a Multi-Page Form With No Code

In this article, we'll take a look at multi-page forms: When to use them, how to create them with Reform, and how to make them conditional based on previous answers given. We'll also look at an example form built with Reform.

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Multi-page vs. one-page: What's best?

Overwhelming your respondents with a form that's half a mile long is sure to kill your response rate. If you need a lot of info from someone, helping them by organizing your form in a less overwhelming way is a good thing. However, before you try to optimize this, it's a good time to consider if you really need all that data. A short form is almost always better than a long one.

Now, with that disclaimer, the second-best option is to break a long form into smaller forms that people are more likely to answer. The most important thing to keep in mind when splitting a form up into multiple pages is your motivation:

If your motivation is to make the form more manageable, and less overwhelming, I'd almost always say "split it up"! But be upfront about it. Make sure people understand that this is going to take a few minutes to get through and let them know upfront if there's anything they'll need to have handy as they get through the pages.

On the other hand, if your motivation is to trick people into answering something you know they wouldn't answer if you were upfront about it, that's not a good thing. There's nothing more frustrating than wasting time filling something out and then realizing there's a catch at the end. Don't do that!

Choose your own adventure

Finally, if part of the form is conditioned on what someone said previously (ie. contains logic rules), I'd always suggest splitting it up. There's no point in making the form longer for folks if there is something they can skip. Put it on its own page and only show it to those who need to answer it. This is the choose-your-own-adventure version of forms!

Multi-page form example

Here's an example of a customer intake form in Reform (this is a Reform template that anyone can use):

It's got two pages. If you don't want to fill it out (which you can), you can use the page counter to move to the second page.

Creating a multi-page form in Reform

Reform is multi-page based in its nature and pages are a core part of the form builder. When you want to move onto the next page, just hit that "Add page" button and start adding form blocks.

As you add pages, your Reform form will start to look more like a Word document. Just remember that pages are shown one at a time to respondents. They won't see the next page until they submit the page they're currently on.

There's one exception, though. By default, Reform shows a little page counter in the corner of the page. That will let respondents browse through pages to see what is coming up. This is nice if you are wondering how long filling out a form might take or are curious about what will be asked of you before you begin. You can hide the page counter on your forms in your form settings.

How to show pages based on previous answers

By default, everyone who fills out your form will see every page, which might not be necessary. By adding Page rules to pages, you can show them selectively to respondents based on what answers they gave on previous pages.

This is how it looks to skip a page based on an answer to a previous question:

"Thank you" page or redirect

Once someone has filled out your form, you have two options: 1. You can show them your "Thank you" page or redirect them to a different URL, such as your website or to a payment link.

"Thank you" pages in Reform work the same way as regular pages, except you can't ask questions. You can add text, images, embed a "thank you" video, etc., but no input blocks.

Alternatively, you can add a URL to redirect people to after they finish. This is handy if you just want to send them back to your own website or if your form is part of a funnel where the next step might be a payment link, calendar scheduling link, etc.

In Reform, you can manage this in your form settings.

And with that, I think that's everything you need to know about how multi-page forms work vs. single-page forms. Please feel free to reach out if you have any questions about this!

Thanks!

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