Contact forms are vital, you don’t need us to tell you that. They serve as the intermediary between the webmaster and the searcher / customer. Contact forms provide a convenient and professional way for your customers to get in contact with you, about the products or services you are offering. It might then come as a surprise to learn that despite their importance, many people don’t know what makes a good contact form or just how important they are. Our latest article will explore this in more detail.
Some recent research and a recent report has looked very closely at this topic and we will share with you some of the most common mistakes or omissions in contact forms.
What should contact forms actually do (apart from the obvious)?
Before knowing what not to do, you actually need to be aware of the fundamental purposes of contact forms.
- In addition to the above, do you know that a contact form is likely to be one of the most visited pages on your website?
- Contact forms also play one of the most valuable roles in gaining conversions (which if you are a business,) matters to your sales and profitability.
- Allow the user to make a relevant and targeted enquiry to save both their time and that of the webmaster.
Problems with many peoples contact forms.
- The form and lack of anything else.
This might sound surprising, but if you solely have a contact form and no other way that your audience can make contact with you (such as a direct phone number displayed or social media,) this can be rather off-putting to some people. This is especially true for those that need to get in touch with you quickly, or don’t like waiting around for a form to be answered. Don’t make the mistake that having a contact form is enough, it is actually the minimum!
- Problems with contact forms.
If you have contact forms on your page are you getting any enquires? The key thing with these forms (especially when new ones are added,) is to test, test, test. Research has shown that users get very frustrated very quickly with contact forms that do not work, such as submit buttons not sending messages or reCAPTCHA features which are broken. Once you attract your audience you want to keep them. Having broken contact forms is one way of driving them away!
- Vague or complex contact forms.
Think about the main aim of a contact form. Yes, it is designed so someone can make contact with you, but this is on the basis that the user supplies as much information as possible for the webmaster to help them in the most efficient and quickest way. There is a fine balance here between a too short and too long contact form. The former is pointless, while the latter is not practical as no-one wants to spend vast time entering details. People get bored easily. Does your contact form strike the middle ground? Research has shown that many peoples do not.
- Unmanned contact form accounts.
This sounds an obvious one but is surprising how many people do not do it. Make sure your contact form is connected to an account that you have easy and quick access to. Multiple opportunities are lost across all businesses each day because webmasters simply do not monitor their web accounts enough (which their contact forms are connected to.) No-one likes being ignored and will simply just go somewhere else, resulting in a potential lost sale or revenue.
To conclude, according to research, avoid these, and you are already well on your way to increasing engagement with your audience through your contact forms!
Interested in learning about conversion optimisation more generally for your website? Find out more by clicking the link.