Easy Ways To Gain Conversions On Your Website Contact Form

Are the contact forms on your website not helping you get conversions?

Whether you’re getting too many unqualified responses or none at all, this one is for you.

But first, why bother with your contact forms?

Website forms help you get those warm leads into your pipeline. The people have somehow gotten onto your website and snooped around until they decided that it might be a good idea to get a hold of you. If your form is hard to use, or worse, non-existent, it’s unlikely you’ll ever be able to convert them.

Think of it this way: if you have a boutique and a potential customer walks in ready to buy, but there’s nobody to help them, they’ll likely leave.

Let’s take a look at your contact form.

1. The number of fields on your website’s form should have a purpose.

Sometimes, all you need is their basic contact information. If this is the case, keep it simple. Ask for name, email, and their inquiry. You could also ask where they heard of you since it’s helpful to know what marketing is working. 

Need to qualify a user? That’s when you add more in-depth questions, such as the number of employees or the budget. This will help A LOT when you’re getting too many people filling the form that aren’t your ideal customers.

The contact form on my website is kept around the middle ground. I ask for enough information I need before I book with you but not a crazy amount, like employee count. Keep in mind that every field has to have a purpose for you - not just because your competition is also asking it.

Bonus: I like to add a simple question that is light-hearted. Right now, I ask what the user’s favorite drink is. I added this at the end to finish in a light-hearted way and have something to connect with them about when we do hop on a call.

2. Left align your form and its contents.

This one is a simple tip. Even when it’s in the middle of a page, make sure you’re left aligning the form’s content and button. It just flows and reads easier. You can also make all fields the same width so that the right side doesn’t look ragged. 

3. Don’t ask for information that is too personal on the contact form.

I had a client once who asked for the usual contact form fields on her website: name and email. Then she started to ask for more information that felt a bit too personal for a new lead. It included the phone number and birthday. 

Because she was getting steady traffic to that page on her website, we were able to see the dip in the number of times the form was abandoned. As soon as she removed those 2 items, she saw an increase.

Depending on the industry, getting asked for your phone number still feels too personal to people.

4. Use color on your website’s form wisely.

Make sure you’re using color to emphasize the form and button. I’ve run across websites where the contact form is so light that it’s almost blending into the background. When it comes to color, you have a few options:

A. You can make the button and form field borders a bright color within your color scheme. I.e. your website’s background color is white and your form is bright red.

B. Your form fields are left dark gray but your button is red while the website’s background is white.

C. You’ve placed a color behind the form to differentiate it from the rest of the white background on the site.

5. Give the user a boost in knowing you’re the right person for the job.

When the website visitor is ready to fill out the form, such as on your contact page, make sure to have some kind of testimonial or other reassurance nearby. I like placing them either below the contact form or next to it in a smaller column. Some things you can add other than the testimonial are a map of your location (even if it’s just the city), a phone number or email (even if the contact form is right there), a short blurb about yourself, or the company tagline. Think of what can assure the user that them filling out the form will be great for their goals.

6. Where is your user going after they fill out the form on your website?

Think about it. Your dream client has been hunting online for your service, found you, stalked you online, then came to your form to connect with you. They are so excited as they fill it out. Thit the submit button and then… nothing. #letdown

The most basic thing that you can do is thank them and let them know you’ll get back to them. If you’re like me, I have a set up in Dubsado that sends an automatic greeting.

Want to take their journey one step further? Create a thank you page and automatically redirect the user to it after they’ve filled out the form.

What could you have on this thank you page?

How about a video on how you’re excited to be connecting with them and when they can expect you to get a hold of them. You could embed your online calendar to get them to book their call. You could even add a general FAQ area so that they can get some of their questions answered before you get to their form information.

Let’s say they did book with you after the thank you page. I had one client who loved their user’s journey so much that we created another thank you page for the booking phase. It would send the lead to a video where she thanked them again, acted a little goofy about how excited she was, and asked them to follow her on social media.

Contact forms on your website don’t have to be an afterthought.

These lead captures can be well thought out and used to show the user how amazing you are.

Tell me in the comments: Do you place contact forms on all of your pages?