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As a campaigner, you know how crucial it is to both attract new members, volunteers and supporters and nurture the ones you already have. While keeping existing members engaged and active forms the backbone of your campaign's strength, there's no denying that continuous recruitment remains essential for growing your collective voice and expanding your reach.
With supporter growth, ironically the most effective place to start is right at the end, the signup page. Here your slightest improvement leads to your biggest gain, as an easier page to complete should lead to more recruits. (And if you really want to do this with ease, check out our own, battle-tested action pages module)
The good news is that improving your signup page can be incredibly simple, in fact we’ve broken it into five easy-to-follow steps to help you create a smoother, more effective recruitment process:
1. Measure everything
The first step in improving signups is simple but vast: start measuring everything. You can’t improve what you can’t track, right? Tools like our action pages make this easy. Using our analytics, running A/B tests on the Movement platform and comparing campaigns you can see exactly where your signup process can be improved. From the moment someone clicks on the link to your page to when they complete their sign-up, our tools let you see exactly where people drop off. By monitoring these drop-off points, you can identify where supporters lose interest or encounter problems and fix them.
As a campaigner your data is invaluable. It takes the guesswork out of recruitment, allowing you to focus on what works. Maybe you’ll discover that a confusing question in the form is turning people away, or that mobile users are abandoning the signup process because of loading problems. With this insight, you can make accurate adjustments and improve your process.
2. Test with real users
It’s easy to assume what will work, but testing your signup process with real users will give you the most accurate feedback. As organisers, we spend a lot of time engaging with people directly, so why not apply that same approach to your digital systems? Invite a few potential members or volunteers to walk through the signup process. Observe where they get stuck or frustrated. What part of the form confuses them? Which questions do they skip?
By getting real feedback, you can identify small but significant pain points that might not be obvious otherwise. Using Movement you can automate follow-up actions such as a WhatsApp survey or a phone-call depending on what action the user takes. Use this feature to find out what the user experience was like. This can lead to major discoveries; for example, a simple wording change or an unclear dropdown menu could be all that’s needed to make the process smoother and improve completion rates.
3. Sweat the small stuff
When it comes to forms, the details matter. A slight tweak can lead to a huge improvement in your completion rates. Consider adjusting the order of questions, making dropdown menus more intuitive, or simplifying wording. Ask for only the information you truly need and make sure every question is easy to understand.
For example, instead of asking for an employer’s name in a free-text box, offer a searchable list of common employer names. This seemingly small change can make a huge difference in reducing friction and improving sign-up completion.
4. Don’t make people think
We’ve all seen long, confusing forms with endless questions that make you wonder when it will end. The truth is that regardless of how worthwhile and important your cause is, most people want to join quickly and with minimal effort. They may be on their lunch break, using their phone, and don’t have time to get bogged down in complex forms. Keep it simple.
Break down long questions into bite-sized, manageable steps. Use clear, simple language and avoid jargon. Consider pre-filling answers where possible, so users don’t have to fill out everything manually. And allow users to continue even if some fields are left incomplete, making it easier for them to complete the process at their own pace.
5. Design for real life
People sign up for things on their phones, on the bus, during lunch, or in between meetings. If your signup forms aren’t optimised for real life, you’re likely missing out on a significant portion of potential members. Make sure your forms load quickly, work offline, and allow users to save their progress and return later. This is especially important for people who may not have time to finish the form in one sitting.
Designing for real life means thinking about accessibility too. Consider different users' needs; some may need large fonts, while others may be using public devices or shared computers. By making your forms as accessible and flexible as possible, you make it easier for everyone to join your cause, no matter their situation. Movement’s action pages allow you to adapt your content and design with ease, and come mobile and tablet optimised, so that anyone from comms pros to volunteers can create a page ready for all.
Movement’s action pages can power your supporter growth
Improving your organisation’s recruitment process doesn’t have to be a monumental task. In fact Movement’s action pages make all of this simple from the off, with battle-tested templates that have already delivered high signups, or our analytics suite that allows you to understand exactly where users are clicking, you can turbo-charge your organisation’s growth with ease.
Remember, measure everything, test with real users, sweat the small stuff, make it easy, and design for real life; these simple steps can transform your signup process.
You’ll not only make your work easier but also build a stronger, more engaged community ready to face the challenges ahead.
If you’d like to talk to us about our action pages module, allowing you to grow signatures, donations, and supporters then hit the Get Started button below:
