Solving Form Delivery Issues

contactformFor a lot of sites, one of the main goals is to get contacts. For example, my own site, my goal is to have people contact me about my services. I want people to fill out my forms. That’s the sole point of having them.

But what do you do if people aren’t filling them out? There could be a lot of reasons.

  1. You ask too many questions. Studies have shown that forms with fewer fields get more entries. In fact, in one study, removing the phone number field increased submissions by 5%. People don’t want to give you all the info on the first inquiry, so remove everything that’s not essential and watch your conversions increase.
  2. You aren’t giving them a good reason. Believe it or not, these forms are give and take. If they are going to give you something (their info) then you need to give something back. What are you offering? For us, it’s a free quote and a promise to respond within 24 hours. Tell them why they should fill out your form and make it a good reason.
  3. Your captcha is too hard. I know, we all hate spam. And without some kind of spam filtering, you can wind up with 1000 emails a day from spammers hitting your form. But the truth is, if you don’t use a captcha, you will get more form submissions. There are other ways to filter out spam. (We use Akismet with Gravity Forms. Works great.)
  4. You haven’t established trust. In addition to why someone should contact you, you need to make them feel like you are a person or company they can trust. With no credibility, you’ll get few submissions. How can you establish trust? Have a solid website with information about who you are and what you do. Include information like an email address and phone number on the site. Go further and encrypt your site with an SSL. (Google gives better ranking for this now anyway.) Add a badge. Member of Angie’s List? BBB? Other accreditations? Add those badges near your form.

Think about when you go to a website and see a form. What makes you leave without filling it out? What makes you decide to go ahead and make contact? Give your clients a compelling reason to go forward and you’ll see better results from your online forms.

Need help getting more conversions on your forms? We can help! Contact us today for a free quote.

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Amy Masson, Web Developer
Owner/Developer

Amy Masson

Amy is the co-owner, developer, and website strategist for Sumy Designs. She's been making websites with WordPress since 2006 and is passionate about making sure websites are as functional as they are beautiful.

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