How forms and signups work on my site
Every name and email a visitor offers you is someone asking to hear from you - the most valuable thing a website collects. This page is the map of how that works on a bernard site: what forms exist, where their submissions go, and the choices you have.
The prompt
“Show me every form on my site and tell me where each one sends its signups - my own list, my mailing provider, or nowhere. Flag anything broken.”
Signed in, Get my prompt fills in your site for you. Otherwise press Copy and fill in the [bracketed] parts. First time? Connect your AI to bernard once: Use your own AI (opens in a new tab).
The three places a form can deliver
Every form on your site is wired to exactly one destination, and knowing which is the whole game:
- Your contacts on this site (the default). Every submission becomes a contact (see Where do the people who buy, join or ask end up?). You’re emailed on each one, their answers and consent are stored, and welcome emails can follow automatically. Nothing external to set up.
- Your mailing provider. The form delivers straight to a form in your ActiveCampaign, Mailchimp or similar account, so your existing lists, tags and automations behave exactly as they always have. See Connect a form to ActiveCampaign, Mailchimp or my email provider. If you use HubSpot, your own HubSpot form sends each lead straight into HubSpot: see Connect my website form to HubSpot.
- Nowhere - a broken form. Common after a move from WordPress, where the form’s machinery stayed behind: it looks fine and swallows every signup silently. See My signup forms stopped working after the move - and ask for a form health check any time; every form on every page gets classified in one pass.
The kinds of form
A form is one of four kinds: waitlist, lead capture, registration, or
enquiry - see Capture leads with a signup form for adding one. Every form asks for an email
(that’s how duplicate signups merge); anything else - name, phone, a question box,
a drop-down list, a yes or no tick box, or a set of tick boxes to tick any that apply -
is up to you. For a list or a set of tick boxes you give the options, and a submission
can only carry one of those. File uploads aren’t available yet. Forms can carry a label (say, glazing-guide) so signups from
different funnels stay separate audiences for later emails. Each person who signs
up through a labelled form also gets the tag “form: glazing-guide”, so you can start
automatic emails for that one form: see Start automatic emails when I give someone a tag.
Two things a form deliberately cannot do: mark someone as a buyer or student (those are earned by a purchase, never claimable through a public form), and carry a pre-ticked consent box (consent needs a real affirmative act - the box always starts unticked, and the wording shown is stored as evidence).
A long form, a step at a time
A short signup form is best left as it is. A longer one, an application with eight or ten questions, is easier to finish when it asks a couple at a time. Ask Bernard to step it (“Show the application form two questions at a time”) and it gets a Next and a Back button and a strip along the top: “Step 2 of 5”, how far along they are, and a dot for each step, with the current one ringed. You can also say which questions belong together and what each step is called (“put the name and email together as About you”).
A step only moves on when its required questions are answered, and the browser says which one is missing. Back keeps everything typed so far. The consent box and the send button sit on the last step. The strip takes your site’s own text colour, so it suits a dark page and a light one. Someone whose browser has scripts turned off sees the whole form at once, as before.
Once someone sends a form, it steps aside and a short “Sent” card takes its place, with a thank-you line. You can choose those words (“Thank you. We’ll be in touch about your order.”), add a second line under them, and add one link, for example to your Instagram. Nothing on the card promises a reply time unless you write one. On a stepped form the strip above it shows every step done. If a send fails, the form stays put with a line saying what went wrong, and nothing typed is lost.
What happens after a submission
For forms wired to your list: the contact appears with their answers, you get a notification email, and if you’ve set one up, a welcome email goes out in your voice. For forms wired to a provider: whatever your provider is configured to do - its automations, its thank-you page or a redirect you set there. Either way, spam protection and rate limits guard the public endpoint. They won’t catch a human typing spam by hand, so if one gets through, delete the contact and it’s gone.
The notification email arrives from your site’s name “via Bernard”, and hitting reply on it goes straight to the person who wrote in.
As with everything, changes to forms happen on a draft you preview and approve before they’re live.
If your sign-ups go to Typeform or another form service today and you want them in your contacts here instead, see Move my Typeform (or other form) sign-ups into bernard.
Questions people ask
- Where do form submissions go?
- By default, straight into your contacts on this site - each signup appears as a contact with what they typed and what they agreed to, and you get an email for every submission. A form can instead deliver to your mailing provider (ActiveCampaign, Mailchimp and the like) so your existing automations fire; see the wiring guide for that.
- What kinds of form can I have?
- Four: a waitlist (‘tell me when it opens’), a lead capture (‘send me the guide’), an event registration, and a general enquiry form. What a form can’t do is mark someone as a buyer or a student - those come only from a real purchase, so nobody can forge a customer record through a public form.
- How does consent work?
- A marketing-consent checkbox always starts unticked - the visitor must tick it themselves, and the exact wording they saw is stored with their record as evidence. A form physically cannot be created with the box pre-ticked; that isn’t lawful on a form, and it’s deliberately impossible rather than merely discouraged.
- Can a form ask people to accept my terms or conditions?
- Yes. A form can carry one required ‘I accept the conditions’ box, with a link to the page that lists them. The form cannot be sent until it is ticked, and each submission records the wording accepted. It is separate from the marketing box: accepting your conditions never counts as permission to send marketing.
- Can a form offer a list of choices or tick boxes?
- Yes. A question can be a drop-down list where people pick one option (a country, say), a single yes or no tick box, or a set of tick boxes where people tick as many as apply (the sectors they work in). You say the options, and only those options can be sent. A yes or no tick box is an answer, not permission to send marketing; that stays the separate consent box. Like every change, it waits on a draft for your approval.
- What does a form’s label do?
- Two things. Its sign-ups become their own audience for campaigns, and each person who signs up through it gets a tag made from the label (a form labelled glazing-guide tags them “form: glazing-guide”). Use that tag to start automatic emails for that one form, or to narrow a campaign. Only sign-ups from the moment this started get the tag; people who signed up before do not.
- Can I welcome the people from one form only?
- Yes. Ask Bernard for automatic emails that start when someone is given the form’s tag, such as “form: glazing-guide”. They start when the person confirms, or straight away for someone who had already confirmed. The general welcome sequence still goes to every confirmed sign-up from every form, so switch it off if you only want the one.
- Can a long form ask a few questions at a time?
- Yes. Ask Bernard to show the form a couple of questions at a time and it gets a Next and a Back button and a strip along the top saying which step people are on. A step only moves on when its required questions are answered, and Back never loses what was typed. Like every change, it waits on a draft for your approval.
- Do form changes go live immediately?
- No. Adding, rewiring or removing a form lands on a draft with a preview link, and nothing changes on your live site until you approve it.