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1. Position The Form Properly
Don’t hide your form! Make sure your contact form is in a prominent position toward the top of your contact page. This way, it is easy for anyone to access and not buried beneath a mountain of content.
2. Limit The Number Of Fields
Keep it simple. In a study of over 40,000 landing pages by Hubspot, Dan Zarella found that reducing the number of form fields from four fields to three increases your conversion rate by 50%. Studies have proven that people don’t have the time to fill out complex forms, nor do they want to give you all of their personal information at the start.
Grab the essentials – name and email address. From there you can reach out to your new contact and as much information as you like.
3. Reduce The Number Of Required Fields (Especially The Phone Number!)
On top of reducing the overall number of fields, make sure not to make too many fields required. Having to hand over too much personal information through an informal contact form can deter users from submitting the form, especially if you haven’t developed a trusting relationship yet. It’s safer to require essential information and then build that relationship over time.
As mentioned in the previous point, the required fields are name and email address. Why not phone number you ask? While we see many contact forms requiring the phone number field, many studies have found that users are very skeptical of providing their phone number. Clicktale, a popular analytic tool, found that making the phone number optional on their sign up form nearly doubled conversion rates from 43% to 80%. Other leading companies have found similar results, including Unbounce and Marketing Experiments.com.
4. Choose The Right Color For The Call To Action (CTA)
Choosing the right color means picking a color that matches your brand’s website design while also popping enough to draw the user’s attention and make them want to click it. Unfortunately, there’s no universal best color for call to action buttons. Instead, experiment with different high-contrast colors to make your button stand out and draw your user’s attention.
5. Don’t Just “Submit” The Form
Just like making your call to action button the correct color, customizing its message is also an essential detail to entice users to complete your form. Forms generally fall back to having button text like “Submit.” How informal is that?! Having a robotic message like that can deter people from converting your form. Instead, make your CTA friendly to read and rewarding to complete. Here are some examples of real-world forms:
- Contact Our Specialist
- Complete Your Registration
- Sign Up Free
6. Indicate Errors And Guide The User
Have you ever tried to submit a form and were unable, but it did not indicate what you did wrong? Whether the user leaves out a required field or does not enter a proper email address, form errors are a common occurrence.
A study by Luke Wroblewski found that inline error validation significantly increased form conversion metrics. In one study of a shopping cart system, Luke found a 22% increase in success rates, 22% decrease in errors made, and a 31% increase in satisfaction rating. In other large scale tests, he found errors reduced by over 80%. Regardless of the application, you can see that validation greatly increases your prospects of receiving a contact request.
Without properly guiding the user to what went wrong, and how to remedy it, you could be losing many potential contacts. Talk to your web developer and make sure that your forms contain error messaging and your users will be happy.
7. Provide Alternate Contact Methods
While the main goal is to have the user complete your contact form, don’t limit them to only that option. Be sure to include other methods of contact near your contact forms such as phone number, email address, social media, and any other means of getting in touch with you.
8. Final Thoughts
Keep your forms simple. Your primary focus should be getting your customers name and email address, and then you can obtain whatever data you need after that. I hope these points show you how to improve the experience of your contact forms for your customer and hopefully increase your form conversions!
