Getting people to fill out your contact forms feels like a balancing act. On one hand, you want to maximize the number of conversions on your forms. But on the other hand, you don’t want to be flooded with low-quality submissions either.
How do you make sure your contact forms attract quality leads — and get enough of them to convert to meet your goals? Start with these five tips for creating better contact forms.
5 Contact Form Best Practices
You want to capture the right people at the right time and at the right locations on your website pages. And how you do that all comes down to the way you build and optimize your contact forms.
Opt for Simplicity
Minimize fields to only the information that is necessary for your specific contact form. This may take some testing to figure out. You don’t want the barrier to entry to be so high that quality leads find your form too overwhelming to complete. But you also don’t want it so low that you’re getting bad data.
If a user wants to contact sales for a demo, you’ll likely want to collect their name, phone number, email, and company. However, if a user wants to submit a support ticket, you may only need to collect their name, email or account number, and a description of the problem.
It’s important to keep your form concise and easy to fill out, but don’t sacrifice important information that could help you qualify your leads or customers. Remember to strike a balance between the two and always keep the user experience in mind.
Add Context
The types of contact forms on your site will vary depending on your goals. Whether you’re building a sales contact form, demo request, support ticket form, or something else, always remember the context.
Context can be as simple as stating what you want your users to do in the headline of your contact form. A clear form headline will create a sense of urgency or excitement that can help motivate users to complete your form.
These headlines can be as simple as, “Request Your Free Demo Now” or “Get Your Free Trial Started Now.” Using calls-to-action as headlines aim to grab attention and convey the value you’re offering through the contact form.
Not sure what to write on your contact form’s CTA button? Here are 50 custom call-to-action triggers to get you started.
Make Errors Obvious
If a user fills out your contact form, they are expecting you to reach out to them. So it’s important that you ensure the data you collect through this form is accurate and usable. Be sure to offer error messages if a user fails to fill out a required field or inputs data in the wrong format.
Real-time validation can also reduce friction and stress caused by errors. This immediate feedback helps users see and fix errors the moment they occur instead of when they hit the submit button. Be sure to disable the form submission button until all errors are fixed.
To meet accessibility standards, place your error messages near the respective form fields. They should include simple, clear wording in addition to any symbols and colors.
Prioritize Data Security
Ensuring data protection in contact forms is crucial to protect sensitive information shared by users. This includes practicing data minimization, or only collecting the data you need. But it also involves what happens once a user submits their data.
Depending on the type of contact form, users will need to disclose personally identifiable information (such as phone number and email) or more sensitive data such as credit card information. It’s important that you have the right security standards in place to collect this type of data.
Be sure that the data submitted through your contact form is transmitted securely using SSL/TLS encryption. It’s also a security best practice to store the information you collect in a secure database with proper access controls.
State What’s Next
The user experience doesn’t end once an individual hits the submit button on your contact form. Direct users to a confirmation page with a clear message of what’s next. This helps ensure that you set the right expectations for your users.
If your contact form is to schedule a meeting with sales, let the user know when they can expect to hear back from someone on your team. Similarly, if a user has submitted a support contact form, let them know how long it should take to respond.
Learn More Form Building Tips
If you have more than contact forms on your website, you probably want to ensure that these are optimized as well. Be sure to read our Ultimate Guide to Web Forms or download our eBook for more form building best practices.
