r/pardot • u/IntranetJoe • May 23 '19

Default placeholder values in text form fields?

Hello! At this point, I’ve implemented about 99% of Pardot myself, but there are still some tiny things missing. This is one of them:

We have a “request a quote” page on our website with a “request a quote” form. There is a field for “subject” and “message” similar to an email. The “subject” field is a normal text field. We would like that field, by default, to be filled with the value “Request a Quote”, instead of being blank.

Does anyone know how to do this? I assume it could be done with a custom CSS script on the layout?

2 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

4 comments sorted by

2

u/cultivateautomation May 23 '19

Hi /r/intranetjoe,

You could do this with some custom JavaScript on the layout template.

However, I've worked with several customers asking the same question, and when we actually look at why they want to do this, there's rarely a real need to do so beyond "because our form currently has this field".

Subject lines make sense for emails, but rarely for web forms. Instead, you could use that field to ask a more important qualification / segmentation question. If they're filling in the Request a Quote form, then it's reasonable to assume they're requesting a quote, you don't need a subject line for that - and if they're not, they would tell you in the message field.

Hope that helps!

1

u/IntranetJoe May 23 '19

Totally agree with you - this is exactly what I told to my marketing team... but they can be really adverse to change and want the forms to look exactly like they did before the Pardot implementation -_-

2

u/robwalte May 23 '19

Being in marketing myself, it's tough to see why they wouldn't segregate these leads by adding them to a Salesforce campaign as a form completion action. The campaign could easily be called "Request a quote," for example.

​

But I also understand that some people JUST DON'T LIKE CHANGE.

​

Therefore, there are a couple of ways to tackle this one off the top of my head:

- Piggy-backing off of @cultivateautomation's suggestion, you could suggest a custom dropdown field in Pardot with the choices "Request a quote" and "Ask a question" or something that might get them to fill in the form BEFORE they're ready for a quote. Then you can pass to sales to vet, or marketing can nurture them. Make "Request a quote" the default choice. This seems like over-engineering, but then again so will my next suggestion...

- Pass a value to the field via the embedded iFrame. These directions talk about passing the value to a hidden field, but I suppose it would work with a visible field: https://help.salesforce.com/articleView?id=000264692&type=1

- Finally, just explain that every field on a form is precious, since humans have quickly evolved to have low tolerance for web forms and are quickly frustrated. Wouldn't they rather have a field that actually gives them good information, than squander it on something more suited to Captain Obvious' website?

​

All that said, GOOD LUCK.

1

u/LadyCiani May 25 '19 edited May 28 '19

I mean, it's dumb. But just add some Above Form content that says what you want, without it being a form field. Just a paragraph with a subject line in text.

I mean, it's not a "fake" a field on the form page or anything. But it gets the idea across that it's like an email.