1. Avoid overwhelming visitors with too many fields
The form is copied and pasted from somewhere without any consideration of what the visitor is being asked to do. Are you going to ask the person for their date of birth or their marital status if you could call somebody or if you receive a call from a stranger? Think about whether or not what you are being asked is reasonable. On the first visit, making sure an individual knows their name and a way to reach them can usually be as simple as asking for an email address or a phone number.
2. Avoid using drop-down menus
Once again, this indicates that you copied someone else’s form and never put any thought into your own. People don’t care if you call them “Mr” or “Mrs,” even if their official title is “Commander” or “Reverend”, so doesn’t bog down your form with a drop-down menu that offers 30 options. If your business deals with a limited territory, don’t allow people to choose from 200 or more countries in the address section of the website.
3. Do not alienate mobile visitors
Mobile devices like smartphones and tablets present increased design challenges due to their increased use. The contact form builder on your site should be easy to fill in on a mobile device, as well as being able to read on a mobile device. To do this, your form fields and drop-down menus must have enough vertical space between them for users to comfortably use their fingers, as well as having a sufficient size so that users can flick easily between them.
4. Be sure not to use opt-outs with your affiliates
People would rather opt in than opt out of a service. If people fill out your form in a hurry or without properly reading it (and, come on, who has not done this?) then they wind up getting bombarded with junk mail, this paints a bleak picture of your company. You should tell people what their options are and provide as much clarity as possible.
5. Do not overcomplicate security methods
As important as it is to ensure your form is not used by spammers, you should also consider your security system – usually a disguised-word code – and make sure it isn’t too obscure. Consider the mobile user again. How will your security method appear on a mobile device if it is deliberately hard to read on a monitor? Tests are crucial once again. Obtain third-party viewpoints on the security of your security question by speaking to others about how they filled out forms.
A little research at the planning stage could solve most issues with contact forms. Don’t be fooled by an internet cut-and-paste option that seems to work. Your customers may not have trouble filling out your form, but by making it short, easy to fill out, and easy to view, more people will be attracted to your business.
A Contact Form with Required Fields
In order to collect information from visitors to your website, you need your contact form. It is beneficial to both parties to allow your site visitors to send a message at a time convenient to them, and for you to reply with a thoughtful response rather than a short, hurried message, in today’s high-tech age of email and instant messaging.
A good form design should enable potential customers to feel comfortable sharing their details with you. This feeling of security and professionalism from the rest of your site will enhance that feeling of comfort, so you should be careful not to intimidate visitors by over-requests for their personal information.
Visitors to your website will always be looking for certain pieces of information from you before they get in touch. In most cases, all that will be required is your email address or phone number. In order to get the dialogue started and the process moving, this will be sufficient. It is perfectly okay to make more fields mandatory if your service covers more specific needs, or if you have a limited scope and you can perform it with a little more information.
However, it is crucial to not overburden your form with questions and then put asterisks against each one, making people fill out all of your form before it can be submitted. It may seem intrusive to some people. You may get questions about why you need certain details and, ultimately, visitors may abandon your site because they feel obligated to provide certain information.
If you limited the questions to just name and email address, then you would be able to eliminate the need to make any questions mandatory since the majority of participants would happily fill these out without even blinking.
Creating a simple contact form is essential for starting a conversation with a potential customer. You should only include questions that are necessary to get to know them. Adding intrusive, mandatory questions to your form can alienate a lot of people from your site and make it impossible to get potential customers. Creating an effective, friendly contact form starts with thorough research of your website.
