Most business websites have a contact form. Far fewer have one that actually works.
A form is the last step between an interested visitor and a real enquiry. Get it wrong and you lose the enquiry at the exact moment someone was ready to hand it to you.
What makes it worse is that nobody tells you. People do not email to say your form was annoying. They just close the tab and go, and you carry on with no idea it happened. A weak form is one of the few ways a website loses business without leaving a trace.
Here is what tends to go wrong, and what to do about it.
In Summary
- Long forms with too many fields put people off before they finish
- Confusing labels and unclear error messages make people give up halfway
- A form that fails silently, or that nobody checks, loses enquiries you never hear about
You are asking for too much
Length is where most forms fall down. Every field you add is another small reason to stop.
Look at your main enquiry form and ask what you actually need to start a conversation. For most businesses that is a name, a way to reply, and a short message. The rest can wait until you are talking to the person properly.
Asking for company size or budget or job title might help you, but it costs you. Each extra box makes someone stop and think, and some of them will decide it is not worth the bother. Start with the shortest form you can get away with. You can always ask for more once they are in touch.
Your titles are confusing people
There was a fashion for putting the title inside the field itself, so the word vanished the moment someone started typing. It looked neat. It also caused a mess.
Once the title has gone, people forget what they were being asked, especially further down a longer form. Anyone checking their answers before they send has nothing to go on. And for someone using a screen reader it is a real barrier, which matters for accessibility and, for a lot of organisations, for the law.
Keep the title above the field where people can always see it. It reads better for everyone and it costs you nothing to fix.
Transform Your Online Presence
We design websites that do more than look good. If yours is not bringing in the enquiries it should, we would be glad to take a look.
Errors are sending people away
Sooner or later someone fills a field in wrong or misses one that was required. What the form does next decides whether they stay.
If it just refuses to send and gives no reason, people are left guessing. Worse still is the form that wipes everything they typed and makes them start from scratch. Most will not. That is an enquiry lost, not because they changed their mind but because of how the error was handled.
Put the message right next to the field it belongs to, in plain words that says what needs fixing. Leave everything else they typed exactly where it is. None of this is difficult, and it is often the difference between a finished form and an abandoned one.
The button is doing you no favours
A button that says “Submit” tells the visitor nothing. It is the language of a tax return, not a business someone wants to talk to.
Tell them what happens when they click. “Send my enquiry” or “Request a callback” does the job and feels less like stepping off into nowhere. It is a small change that reassures people right at the point they might hesitate.
Nobody knows if it worked
Two things worth checking today.
First, does the visitor get a clear confirmation once they have sent it, so they are not left wondering whether anything happened. Second, and this is the one that catches people out, are the enquiries actually reaching you.
Forms stop working without any drama. A change to where the email goes, a plugin setting that lapses, a spam filter that gets keen, and submissions quietly stop landing. Because nobody hits an error, nothing looks wrong. The site just goes quieter than usual and you put it down to a slow month.
Send yourself a test enquiry every so often. If the form feeds a CRM or an inbox you rely on, check the messages are arriving where they should. Five minutes, and it protects the one job the whole website exists to do.
Take a look for yourself
Go and fill in your own contact form as though you had never seen your site before.
Was it quick. Did you know what to type. Did you get a clear confirmation, and did the enquiry actually arrive. If any part of that felt like effort, it is putting off people who were ready to get in touch.
The best forms barely register. You ask for little, you make it obvious, and the visitor is through it before they have thought about it. Get that right and a plain contact form quietly turns into one of the most useful things on your entire website.
If you would like us to look at how your forms are doing, we offer a free website review as part of our corporate website design service. No obligation, just an honest look at what is working and what is not.
About Lemongrass Media
Lemongrass Media is a boutique website design agency with offices in Milton Keynes, St Albans and Bedford. We design bespoke corporate websites that look great, work hard and deliver real results for your business.
Contact us | View our corporate website portfolio | Corporate Website Design Services
