Hidden fields

How to use hidden fields within feedback forms and campaign, so you can capture and analyse valuable data to improve every day

Our hidden fields make it so much easier for your stakeholder to provide you with feedback, because they don’t have to fill in the fields you already know. In this article you can read about hidden fields, and how to use these in forms and campaigns.

Step 1: Add (a) "Short text" question(s) to your form

You can add the “Short text” building block on the left by clicking on it or dragging it from left to right into the form builder. Now you're ready to add your short text question, which you can use as a hidden field and populate with smart data.

Step 2: Click on “Hide this field”

If you click on “Hide this field”, the respondent does not see the question. However, the information will be visible for the questioner. Because of this, the respondent does not have to fill in unnecessary questions. This saves a lot of time and the conversion rate will be higher. It does not matter where you put these questions.

Step 3: Name your hidden field(s)

Now you can name your hidden field, by filling in the title field. Use a recognisable title, e.g. "Customer ID" or "Project title", so you can analyse it easily later on when you generate a feedback report. Check out an example hereunder:

Step 4: Find URL parameters of your hidden field(s) and publish your form

Within the form builder, you'll see the way you can use this hidden field within your campaigns, e.g. "?short_text=" (see: example above). Make sure to remember these URL parameters. You can finish and publish your form now. But we still need to make a few adjustments to the group and the campaign you'll be using, in order for the hidden fields to work.

Step 5: Add smart fields for capturing the data you need

Now create a group and add the smart data you'd like to capture for each of the future respondents as a smart field to the group you'll be using for your feedback campaign. E.g. add a smart field with type "text", and give it the name "Customer ID". Provide a default value Ratecard can fall back on, and a custom tag name.

Step 6: Find smart field tags and save your group

Make sure you'll remember the tag names for each field you'll want to use in your feedback campaign, e.g. %TEXT1% for the first smart text field you've added in the step above (see: example below). Please note: you cannot use the custom tag names you provided here (e.g. %CUSTOMERID%). You'll use these tag names within your campaign, in the next step. Then you can finish and create (or save) your group:

Step 7: Create or edit a campaign via the HTML editor

You now have to add the smart data to your campaign in order for Ratecard to memorise it and connect these data to the feedback you'll collect. Go to the "Compose" step within your campaign, and be sure to click the "<>" icon on the top left of the WYSIWYG editor to see the HTML code of your template.

Step 8: Add URL parameters of hidden fields and populate these with smart field tags

The next step is to find all review URLs within your HTML code, e.g. %REVIEWURL%, and add the URL parameters of the hidden fields (see: step 4) and the smart field tags as values (see: step 6). Make sure to use captions for your smart field tags, because this will only work. You'll find a few examples below:

Correct

%REVIEWURL&short_text=%TEXT1%%
%REVIEWURL&short_text=%TEXT1%%

Incorrect

%REVIEWURL?short_text=%TEXT1%%
%REVIEWURL&short_text=TEXT1%
%REVIEWURL&short_text=%text1%%
%REVIEWURL%?short_text=%TEXT1%
%REVIEWURL%&short_text=%TEXT1%

Step 9: Preview and/or send a test message

Last but not least, now we need to check if everything is set up correctly. Click the [Preview] button on the top right within the "Compose" step when editing a campaign, and click one of the links to see if the data is added to the URL correctly. You should see something like this:

https://ratecard.io/your-slug/preview/your-form-id?fname=Robbie&lname=Sakkers&email=robbie%40ratecard.io&group=your-group-id&short_text=default-value

Of course, in comparison with the example URL above, your company slug will replace "your-slug", your form id will replace "your-form-id", your group ID will replace "your-group-id", and the default value you've set for this smart field will be filled in instead of "default-value". Also, your first name, last name and email address will be filled in as preview value for the fname, lname, and email parameters.

Step 10: All set? Let's publish your campaign 💪🏼🚀

All set? Now you can publish your campaign! Running into any problems? Contact us, and we'll help you out.

That's it! Do you want to know more about the other question types we support at Ratecard? Click here and check it out!