Optimizing Contact Forms On Your Website

As was mentioned in a previous post, any business website has a purpose or end goal.  If the purpose to your site is lead generation, then you should be paying special attention to learn how to generate more leads!  One of the key ways that I have discovered in my time at TechWyse is the importance of the 'contact form'.  If you’re a PPC marketer you probably have made sure you or your client have a form somewhere on the website.

Logically then, contact form optimization is important for lead generation for any business website.  

Listed below are my 'bakers dozen' list of things you can do with your contact forms to make sure you are generating leads for your website!

1. Place your form 'above the fold'.  The higher on your page the more visible it is.
2. Put the contact form on as many pages as possible.  If you use landing pages for PPC, make sure you have one there as well.  Conversions will go up!
3. Remember the less fields you use in your form the more requests you will receive.
   Make a strong demarcation between required fields and non required fields by using asterisks next to the required fields. (Don’t overkill forms with asterisks).
4. Remove non required fields if it doesn’t offer any value to your form. This will help create a shorter form.
5. Our fast-paced visitors are impatient and will easily get distracted at exposing their personal details. If not genuinely required avoid inserting boxes asking visitor’s age, profession, phone numbers and postal addresses in your contact form. Do you really need that right now?
6. Make clear what you expect your visitors to do with each field. It will remove any confusion among the customers in filling out fields. You should clarify fields that require further specifications on what information is being requested, so that you can minimize chances of errors by getting incorrect information.
7. Privacy policy - make sure you make this guarantee while asking for personal information! Reiterating your privacy policies on your contact form erases your visitors’ security and privacy apprehensions. It is good to place a link to your privacy page to reassure the visitor.
8. In most cases a visitor is looking for the benefits he/she will get by filling out the form. State plainly the visitor benefits at the top of the contact form page so that there should be no such question on what they’ll expect once they fill out the form.
9. Don’t try to use the generic term “submit”, instead offer a 'call to action' stating the actions visitors are about to take.  Effective colors and shades make the button show up clearly and encourage people to click it.
10. Some visitors are reluctant to fill in contact forms. So to persuade them to take action place a ‘contact us’ link and phone number on every page. As a 'rule of thumb' a contact link should be placed on every page in the top-right corner of the site.  
11. Break longer forms into smaller sections. Also place page breaks (for e.g page 1 of 2) if you need to.  Displaying page breaks indicates the visitors how much of the form has been completed and how many to go.  Have check boxes or appointment scheduling?  Be creative.  Look at this form to see just one idea. 
12. Autoresponders - contact forms should have an auto response mailing system and include your email id and contact information. 

Testing your hypothesis