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How to Generate More Leads with Free Online Calculators (Pro Tip)

Do you want to generate more leads with free online calculators?

Online calculators are a great way to get a visitor’s contact information so you can target them with personalized ads, emails, newsletters, and other forms of online marketing.

In this article, we will show you how to create an online calculator and start generating more leads for your WordPress site.

How to generate more leads with free online calculators (pro tip)

Why Are Online Calculators Such Great Lead Generation Tools?

Online calculators are useful tools that can help visitors solve a problem or answer a question. Even better, you can ask for the visitor’s email address before showing their results, which makes them a great way to generate leads.

You can use online calculators in lots of different industries and niches. For example, you might add a BMI calculator and then encourage visitors to subscribe to your training plan if they need to increase or decrease their BMI.

An example of a BMI calculator

If you sell to a global audience, then a calculator that converts metric units to imperial units can get you more sales by helping customers check if a product is the right size or weight.

You can also add a mortgage calculator to your real estate website or a car payment calculator to your vehicle dealership site.

An example of a car auto loan calculator

The possibilities are endless, so it’s easy to see why online calculators are quickly becoming one of the most popular ways to grow your email list.

That being said, let’s show you how to create an online calculator and generate leads.

How to Create Online Calculators Without Any Code

The easiest way to add online calculators to WordPress is by using the Formidable Forms plugin. It’s the most advanced drag-and-drop form builder and the best WordPress calculator plugin on the market.

Formidable Forms comes with lots of calculator templates, including a mortgage calculator that you can add to your IDX real estate website and a BMI calculator that’s ideal for health blogs and gym websites.

An example of a BMI calculator, created using Formidable Forms

Plus, Formidable Forms integrates with the most popular email marketing services like Constant Contact, Brevo (formerly Sendinblue), Drip, and more. This means you can add visitors to your email list automatically, as long as you get their permission.

The first thing you need to do is install and activate both the free Formidable Forms Lite and the premium Formidable Forms plugins. For more details, see our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Once you’ve done that, head over to Formidable » Global Settings and select ‘Click to enter a license key manually.’

Formidable license key manual link

You can find your license key by logging into your account on the Formidable Forms website.

Then, simply paste your license key into the field and click the ‘Save License’ button.

Enter formidable license key

After that, you’ll see a ‘license activation success’ message.

Choose a Calculator Form Template

Now you are ready to create your first calculator by going to Formidable » Forms and then clicking ‘Add New’.

Add new Formidable calculator

You’ll now see all the different form templates you can choose from.

In the search box, type ‘Calculator’ and then select the ‘Calculator’ category.

Select calculator category

This opens a dropdown where you can choose the calculator template that you want to use.

To preview a template, simply hover over it and then click the little icon that looks like an eye.

Previewing a Formidable Forms template

To use a template, hover over it and then click on the ‘+’ icon.

For this guide, we’ll be using the ‘Compound Interest Calculator’ template, but you can use any calculator template you want.

Select compound interest calculator

After that, type a title into the ‘Form Name’ field and enter an optional description. This is just for your reference, so you can use anything you want.

With that done, click on the ‘Create’ button.

Name and describe calculator form

Design Your Free Online Calculator

You’ll now see your chosen template in the Formidable Forms editor.

From here, you can simply point and click to customize any field in the form. For example, if you want to change the field label or number range for the ‘Initial amount,’ then simply click to select that field.

You can then make your changes using the settings in the left-hand menu.

Customize calculator field example

To add more fields to the calculator, simply select the ‘Add Fields’ tab in the left-hand menu. Then, drag the field onto the calculator template.

For example, if you want to collect the visitor’s email address, then you’ll need to add a field where people can type in this information. To do this, simply drag and drop an ‘Email’ field onto the calculator template.

Adding fields to an online calculator

After that, click on the ‘Email’ field and make any changes using the ‘Field Options’ settings.

You can typically use the default settings, but to generate as many leads as possible, it’s a good idea to check the ‘Required’ box. This means visitors will need to enter an email address in order to see their results.

Check email required box

You can continue to customize your calculator by changing the values for the fields and even adding new fields.

When you’re happy with how the calculator looks, click the ‘Update’ button.

Publish or update calculator

After a few moments, you’ll see a ‘successfully updated’ message. You can now click on the ‘x’ icon to close the form builder.

Add a Free Online Calculator to WordPress

You’re now ready to add the calculator to any page or post on your WordPress website. To add it to a new page, simply go to Pages » All Pages and then click the ‘Add New’ button.

Add new page for calculator

To start, type in a title for the calculator page.

Once you’ve done that, click on the ‘+’ icon and type ‘Formidable Forms.’ When the right block appears, give it a click to add it to the page.

Adding an online calculator with Formidable Forms

After that, you simply need to open the ‘Select a form’ dropdown and choose the calculator you created earlier.

WordPress will now load the custom calculator automatically.

The Formidable Forms WordPress block

At this point, you can continue editing the page by adding text, images, a description of the calculator, categories and tags, and more.

When you’re ready to make the calculator live, click the ‘Publish’ or ‘Update’ button in the right-hand corner.

How to publish an online calculator to your WordPress website

Your new calculator page is now live on your website.

Bonus: Get More Leads with OptinMonster

Your next task is driving people to the free online calculator so you can get more subscribers and leads for your small business website.

Compound interest calculator example

That’s where OptinMonster comes in.

OptinMonster is the best WordPress lead generation plugin and comes with professionally designed templates and a drag-and-drop editor that you can use in your campaigns.

OptinMonster's professionally-designed templates

It also has tools like lightbox popups, slide-in popups, countdown timers, header and footer banners, and more.

All of these tools are perfect for promoting your free online calculator so you can get more users and conversions.

A popup, created using OptinMonster

If you run an online store, then OptinMonster also has an advanced exit-intent feature that can convert abandoning visitors into customers and subscribers.

To learn more, see how we increased our email subscribers by 600% with OptinMonster.

We hope this article helped you learn how to generate more leads with online calculators. You may also want to see our guide on how to increase your blog traffic and our expert pick of the best email marketing services for small businesses.

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