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Contact Forms – The Do’s and Dont’s
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Contact forms are a very important part of your website, yet they are often disregarded. A good contact form can be, if done properly, a great marketing tool to capture prospective clientele and also stay in touch with your customers.

13 things you should think about before creating a contact form

  • Do know your target audience. Based of the type of clientele you want to target, the length, purpose and design of the contact form will differ. For instance, a younger customer audience tends to want a short trendy form. You, as the site owner, may prefer a very long form where your visitor fills out every field, but the truth is it has to work for your clients and prospects, not just for you.
  • Don’t make it too long. Again you may be tempted in asking all sorts of questions to the visitor but, if you ask for too much, most people will simply exit the page and not send anything at all. Have the crucial and most important data collected and keep your other questions for a phone call or email exchange. By then, you have built a rapport with the sender and he/she will be more willing to share more details with you. Some clients offer 2 forms: A short quick contact form and a long one. Our experience has shown that the short form is always the one being used.
  • Don’t make the contact form hard to find. This is a real turn-off for most visitors. We understand hiding your phone number if you want all communications to be digital but, at the very least, give a form for online visitors to reach you if they have questions.
  • Do make sure that your form is user-friendly on mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. Remember that many people nowadays will use their mobile device to contact you.
  • Do add some text right before the form to encourage the visitor to use it. Keep it short, friendly and most importantly simple. Edit the text from time to time to make it relevant to the season.
  • Do make the design of the form interesting and compelling but make sure it is not too busy or confusing for the sender.
  • Don’t make all fields required. People hate to be forced to submit information they may not be ready to share with you. Make the email address mandatory to reduce spamming but leave other fields, if possible, optional.
  • Do add a CAPTCHA that will protect your form from spammers and hackers but make sure the CAPTCHA is easy to use for the sender. Either a quick sum or easy to read code will do the trick. We used to recommend not to have one but, with the increase rate of website security breaches around the world, our recommendation now is to have a CAPTCHA on every single form.
  • Do customize your send button either visually or in text. Upgrading the word “Send” to a call-to-action such as “Click here to send us your message” or “Submit your request now” has a better conversion rate.
  • Don’t just have an on-screen message “Message sent!”. Instead redirect the sender to a great thank you page to thank the sender for their time, explain what your reply process is, who will be contacting them and reassure them that it has been received. Keep it friendly and positive.
  • Do have a system in place to capture, organize, save and respond to each request.
  • Do check your forms once a month to make sure the server and website are working as they are supposed to.
  • Do have different forms through out your site for different purpose and types visitors.

Contact us should you need a form for your website.

We also invite you to watch our short video discussing the 13 do’s and dont’s. Simply click play and enjoy.



what makes a great contact form
 

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