The 5 W’s of Form Building

Before you even log in to FormAssembly, your form building process has already begun. Taking time to think through the key aspects of your form helps ensure it’s effective, efficient, and tailored to your audience. One helpful framework for this early planning stage is the classic “5 W’s”: Why, Who, What, When, and Where.

Watch the clip below from our annual virtual user conference, FormFest 2025, to learn more, or read on for a recap.

Why

Start with the purpose. Why does this form need to exist? What problem is it solving—for you and for your respondents?

For example, imagine that you are a company that handles professional development registration manually via email and spreadsheets. The goal of creating a form would be to streamline this process, save time, and improve tracking.

Knowing the “why” becomes your North Star, helping you make thoughtful decisions about every other aspect of the form.

Who

Understanding your audience is essential to building a user-friendly form. Is your form for students? Internal staff? Technically savvy users, or those who need a more guided experience?

In the case of professional development registration, the audience is internal employees. That means it is important to keep the form private—accessible only to people within the organization—and as frictionless as possible. Features like SAML authentication and prefilled fields helped ensure a secure, efficient, and seamless user experience for busy team members.

What

The “what” often takes the most time and attention. What information do you need to collect? What logic needs to be in place? What systems need to receive the data?

For the registration use case, this means gathering contact info, department details, and registration preferences. The data needs to be sent to both Salesforce and a spreadsheet for the session speaker. The form also needs to trigger confirmation emails to the registrant and their manager. Thanks to Workflow, this entire process – prefill, data routing, and email communication – is manageable within a single streamlined form experience.

When

Next, consider timing. When should the form be available? Should it always be live, or are there specific open and close dates?

For recurring monthly sessions, the team might want a form that automatically closes one week prior to the event to give the speaker time to prepare. FormAssembly makes this easy with built-in availability settings. You can set hard deadlines or use quotas (such as closing after the first 100 submissions) to manage limited seating events.

Where

Finally, determine where your form will live. How will respondents access it?

Rounding out our example, the registration form needs to be published in two places: a monthly internal newsletter and the company’s intranet or website. FormAssembly offers several publishing options with which to do this, including hosted URLs and embed options like iFrames. 

Final Thoughts

Form building is more than just dragging and dropping fields – it starts with asking the right questions. Using the 5 W’s ensures you build smarter, more strategic forms that work for everyone involved. Whether you’re planning your next internal registration or launching a customer-facing form, this framework can set the stage for a successful build.

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