Your website exists so that your prospective customers can gather information about your business, learn more about your products and services, and, if they are ready, to contact you! Don’t make it any harder to convert a lead than it needs to be. Here are three reasons why you must have a contact form on your website.
1. Email links don’t always work
If you have just a plain text email link such as, ‘Email us at jdoe@example.com‘, the link doesn’t always work!
For those that use web-based email, clicking an email link will most of the time try to open the default email client program on their computer. On Windows this would be Outlook or Windows Live Mail, on a Mac it could be Apple Mail.
Imagine the frustration of the individual when the program window pops up and they have to hit cancel! Then they must copy the email address and paste it. This might seem trivial but could be just enough to turn someone away.
Another issue could be if for some reason the individual is unable to access their email at the time, if a network is blocking access to web mail, or they are on a mobile device and don’t want to open email, filling out a form is a quick and effortless way to get in touch.
2. Missed opportunities – conversion rate improvement
When someone wants to contact you, they typically would like the experience to be as simple as possible. Why else were contact forms invented? It’s a simple way to open the door for a potential contact to fill out a form and hit the send button and wait for a response.
But there’s even more! With a contact form, after someone fills it out and hits the button, you have an opportunity to convert them to other possible options. In a best case scenario after they hit the send button on the form, they are instantly redirected to a new web page that thanks them for the interest and contact and then gives them a few other potential opportunities such as to check out other resources on your website that they might not have known about.
Example: Thank you for contacting us! We will get back in touch soon, in the meantime, you might want to check out our XYZ Product Blog for tips and tricks about our industry.
It doesn’t have to be anything overly complicated, but it’s a form of nurturing your lead just a tad bit more.
3. Building better relationships and tying into sales process
Just having the forms and putting into best practice the locations and fields is one important step, but there are other benefits to these.
When you use an integrated lead generation system, such as tying the form into a CRM (customer relationship management system) like Salesforce or HubSpot CRM and the list goes on, you are able to get greater lead intelligence but also to make the sales process smoother for a sales representative and ultimately improve the customer experience for the prospect!
If you have an email going directly to an individual and they are on vacation and the ball gets dropped and the person isn’t contacted in a timely manner, bye bye new business!
When the sales team is tipped off that a new lead came in, wala! Magic can happen and the rest is history.
Contact (Lead) Form Best Practices
Now that you know the three reasons you must have contact forms, better yet, call them lead forms, here are a few best practices.
Only include the absolute minimum fields (boxes) necessary
No one likes to fill out a lengthy form, unless there is good reason. Only ask for information that is necessary. To begin, you may need Name, Email, Phone, and a comment or question. When appropriate you could ask for more, but only when it’s appropriate.
Don’t JUST have a form on the Contact Us page
The golden opportunity with a lead form is that when its placed in front of a truly compelling offer such as a free download of a white paper, guide, tip sheet, etc., the value to the requester is they get some high quality information and express interest, while you and your sales team gets a much warmer lead than any of your direct mailings could even wish to hold a candle to.
Test your forms to make sure they work!
I have seen it happen many times; a website owner hears from someone they have tried many times to contact them through the website on a form and no one ever got the message. Forms, while a great marketing and sales tool, also increase the complexity technologically, so make sure that you test them at least once a month to make sure they are chugging along doing their job!
Question: What successes or wins have you seen with contact lead forms?