Most application forms are written for the reviewer, not the applicant. They ask for everything at once, in the order the organisation happens to think about it.
Break the form into named sections and tell the applicant where they are. A visible sense of progress is the single cheapest improvement available.
Put identity and eligibility first, the demanding open questions in the middle, and uploads last. Applicants abandon at the moment effort spikes without warning.
Then ask fewer, better questions. Two well framed prompts produce more usable evidence than eight vague ones, and they take a fraction of the time to review.