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Why you don't need a contact form to really boost your results
Posted by Simeon Stanford
Last updated 28th September 2018
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Does your website need a contact form?
So, sorry if the title is a little misleading here. The truth is - you don't need a contact form because you don’t just need to be contacted!
What a small business website needs for success and growth are forms that drive engagement, increase true conversions and give you ways of connecting meaningfully with your customers, your prospects and your potential partners.
Let’s take a look at how you might go about achieving this.
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The problem at hand
Most small businesses when creating their first web form build the basics. They ask for a name, a number, and potentially an open space for a custom message.
The problem - a form like this promotes inconsistency, it promotes inefficiency and it promotes lower conversions
If you treat your customers with a one-size-fits-all mentality, you’ll only have yourself to blame when you achieve one-size-fits-all results. The same is true of your forms.
Ultimately, your customers should leave feeling smarter and satisfied after interacting with you - even via a web form.
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What do poor quality web forms do?
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They promote inconsistency
If your form is made up of only an open text field for visitors to leave a message, then the types of responses you’ll receive lack any form of control or predictability.
You’ll have some people submit forms with clear and detailed info on their needs, and others that will leave you banging your head against a wall and forced to call them just to clarify what they’re looking for.
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They worsen efficiency
Forms that are inconsistent or poorly built lead to an inherent problem of inefficiency.
This may not be an issue if you are only dealing with 1 or 2 form submissions, but when you start to scale and grow your business, you’ll want to be able to automatically prioritise the order you follow up with leads as well as have sensible chains of follow up to close more business.
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They lead to lower conversions
It’s a no-brainer.
Forms that take longer to fill in and require more manual entry from customers will get fewer completions than those that are quicker and easier to fill in.
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So, what forms should you use?
You need to consider for each page and section of your site, "What is the most appropriate form type to use that will engage my visitors and promote the right type of response? Where are they currently in their buying decision journey?".
For example, when someone is visiting your blog, it may be fitting to include a form to subscribe for future updates, or even include a form to allow comments to be left and for users to engage with the story.
Or, what if someone is visiting a service page on your website? Wouldn't this be a perfect opportunity to use a contextual form to reach out to potential purchases of your solution? You can save them the headache of tedious form-filling at this stage by pre-populating the message/need with the current service type.
The opportunities are near endless here, so the only limits are the technologies you use and your imagination!
Luckily, our form builder at Sites Done Right takes care of the first, plus we give a number of starter forms to choose from to speed up your web form creation process. You can even clone existing forms as a starting point when creating your custom forms.
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How are you crushing results with forms?
We'd love to hear about how you are closing more business and generating more leads with your web forms.
Why not share your successes and concerns using our comments section below.
Simeon is a founder at Sites Done Right and heads up the company's sales and partnerships. His experience across business intelligence, data and websites make him a force to be reckoned with.
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