Contact forms are the rubicon for interactions between your company and the outside world. While there are many interaction points and forms on a site (from user account pages, ecommerce\u00a0checkout\u00a0flows, etc.) the contact form is the place where users come to connect directly with you. Improving the conversion rate of your contact form can mean big things for your business.<\/p>\n
Think of all of the different use cases for your contact form: a superstar employee looking for a job, a potential game-changing partnership inquiry, a new\u00a0business opportunity, or a customer service question that can turn a user with a poor experience into a lifelong advocate. \u00a0With all that\u2019s riding on your contact form don\u2019t you think it\u2019s worth spending the time to make it an experience that works?<\/em>\u00a0No matter your use case, an easy contact experience shows users that you care about them.<\/p>\n So in that spirit, I\u2019ve assembled five tips to maximize how many peoplefill out\u00a0your contact form:<\/p>\n In many things, simple wins over complex. As Steve\u00a0Jobs\u00a0put it, \u201cSimple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple.\u201d\u00a0Your contact form should be simple.<\/em>If you take away one thing from this post, it\u2019s that eliminating unnecessary form fields can significantly increase the conversion rate of your contact form.<\/p>\n In fact, Dan Zarrella at HubSpot recently researched the contact forms of 40,000 of their customers and found that\u00a0conversion rate improves by almost half when the number of form fields are reduced from four fields to three.\u00a0Stop and read that again \u2014 eliminate one form field, increase conversion by 50%<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Don\u2019t you wish improving every part of your business was this easy? So start here. Look at your contact form and decide what must stay and what can go. Do you really need their daytime phone number? Cut ruthlessly and measure changes in conversion. You should see them start to head in the right direction.<\/p>\n People are reaching out to you \u2013 an unknown business entity on the web. If you think about it, that\u2019s a big leap of faith. The user takes time out of their day to connect with you and the first thing you do is ask for a bunch of their personal information, including name, email address and who-knows-what else. That\u2019s why it\u2019s imperative to create trust on your contact form.<\/p>\n Let people know that they\u2019re connecting with people that are there to help them with whatever they need.<\/p>\n So how do you create trust?<\/em>\u00a0Much like in the real world, it comes down to the little things:<\/p>\n All of these little things create trust that increases the likelihood that a user will complete your contact form and reach out.<\/p>\n Your contact form serves as a gateway for every type of visitor that may land on your website. From job seekers, salespeople, customers and potential customers, press and more, you\u2019re designing for a very broad audience.<\/p>\n You need specific information from these users to best determine how to help them. A customer needs to be routed to customer service, while a new partnership request needs to go to business development, while an inbound SEO inquiry needs to go to the trash.<\/p>\n Because you have needs when it comes to the data you collect, it\u2019s critical that you articulate what you need and\u00a0why<\/em>\u00a0on your contact form. This is where help text comes in. Unfortunately, if companies typically make the contact form an afterthought, help text is an even lower priority. This can lead to some frustrating experiences and reduced conversion rate on your contact form.<\/p>\n How can you use help text to increase conversion? Again, it\u2019s in the details. Provide ghost text in fields to let users know what should go there.<\/p>\n You can even hint at formatting with the ghost text. For example ghost text for phone numbers that use the (xxx) xxx-xxxx will encourage users to complete the form in that style.<\/p>\n Provide help text below fields to guide users\u2019 input. When more complicated contact forms are used, provide tooltips next to each field that explain in detail the what and whys of the information being collected.<\/p>\n By providing guidance and help in your contact form, you\u2019ll ensure that users are able to make it through to form submission instead of giving up halfway through.<\/p>\n The idea of reducing friction is an ongoing theme. In fact, it should be your default approach to contact form design. But there are specific elements that you can build into your contact forms to reduce friction and improve completion conversion rates.<\/p>\n Set the tab order to allow the user to move quickly and sequentially through the fields. This is especially helpful in the mobile use case and for savvy Internet users. Pay particular attention to the final tab order of the Submit and Cancel buttons. Many quick tabbers will complete a form and expect Submit to be the next field. If they go to submit their information and they inadvertently choose \u201cCancel\u201d due to your field ordering, you\u2019ve made someone very unhappy.<\/p>\n Field focus and highlighting: let users know where they are in the contact form. Highlight the respective field where the user is expected to input information. If they get distracted or if the form has many fields they\u2019ll be able to pick up quickly where they left off.<\/p>\n In-line validation is another way you can reduce friction. Some Javascript can\u2019t let users know if they have a malformed email address BEFORE they submit their inquiry. There\u2019s nothing worse than hunting down an error after you\u2019ve tried to submit your information.<\/p>\n In all areas of contact form design look for ways that you can reduce the friction of the process and watch your conversion rate rise.<\/p>\n Not only is the mobile audience growing ridiculously fast, designing for the mobile experience first can make your contact form easier to use. For starters, thinking mobile first ensures that you eliminate useless input fields.<\/p>\n If you\u2019ve ever filled out a form on an iPhone you know how painful each additional field can be. Thinking mobile first also drives important user interface decisions, such as whether you put field labels above or to the left of your form elements, and what you set as your default options for certain fields.<\/p>\n You never want to be the developer that makes a US-centric audience scroll through 160 countries to get to United States of America to complete a \u201cCountry\u201d field on their mobile device.<\/p>\n Thinking mobile-first also ensures that you\u2019re specifying form element types in your code. When you mark up your form properly, you\u2019re able to leverage native UI elements such as the large, swipeable lists, in iPhones and Android devices that make form completion much easier.<\/p>\n You can also code your contact form to take advantage of mobile capabilities to make form completion easier, driving up conversion. Why make a user input their location information by hand if they can do so using the phone\u2019s GPS with a single click? Can you allow photo uploads or voice-driven input? And can you design your forms to take advantage of different device orientations to open up more space for input?<\/p>\n An increasing percentage of your users will be experiencing your site and reaching your contact form on their mobile device, it\u2019s critical that you design for their needs. The offshoot is that you\u2019ll be improving the experience for every user in the process.<\/p>\n Reducing friction drives conversion rate. No matter what you\u2019re doing with your contact form, the more friction you can eliminate from the user experience, the higher you\u2019ll be able to push your conversion rate. From form field choices, to help text, to layout and design choices that make the user experience clear and consistent, these choices all impact how many people fill out your form.<\/p>\n And by designing for the mobile user, you\u2019ll not only service an ever-growing portion of your visitors, you\u2019ll also reduce friction and improve the experience for desktop users. Contact forms are the interface between your company and the rest of the world.<\/p>\n Make the experience a better one and you\u2019ll find that communication and conversion will both improve A higher conversion rate on your contact form can mean big things for your business, from new customers, to new raving fans, new business deals and more, a high-converting contact form is an important aspect of any successful online presence.<\/p>\n So what other ways can you improve your form field conversion rate?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Contact forms are the rubicon for interactions between your company and the outside world. While there are many interaction points and forms on a site (from user account pages, ecommerce\u00a0checkout\u00a0flows, etc.) the contact form is the place where users come to connect directly with you. Improving the conversion rate of your contact form can mean […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":494,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[660],"tags":[661,662,663],"class_list":["post-338","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-search-engines","tag-business-opportunity","tag-contact-forms","tag-conversion-rate"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/stphn5cole\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/stphn5cole\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/stphn5cole\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/stphn5cole\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/494"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/stphn5cole\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=338"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/stphn5cole\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":342,"href":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/stphn5cole\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338\/revisions\/342"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/stphn5cole\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/stphn5cole\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/stphn5cole\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Lesson #1: Fewer form fields = greater conversion<\/h3>\n
Lesson #2: Create trust on your contact page<\/h3>\n
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Lesson #3: Provide help along the way<\/h3>\n
Lesson #4: Reduce friction everywhere<\/h3>\n
Lesson #5: Design for mobile first<\/h3>\n
Conclusion<\/h3>\n