Is YOUR website contact form working?
So I’ve temporarily relocated to the great city of Vancouver while SAFI performs some market research here in Canada. Consequently, I have never spent so much time initiating contact with potential suppliers, clients, partners, etc via an online contact form on their website. Right now, on an average daily basis I must be using a contact form around 5-10 times per day. As I said, I’ve never used contact forms so much.
Website contact forms are a great tool, they do appeal to a very specific type of user, but that type of user is fast becoming one of the largest user bases. The beauty of a contact form is that they are highly convenient and often narrow down your type of enquiry to ensure that the enquiry goes to the most appropriate person straight away. The user can simply answer a few questions, input their question and press submit. BANG. That’s it, set and forget. Now, just wait for the company to get back to you.
And wait.
Wait a little longer.
Hmmm, maybe my phone is off the hook? Maybe my spam filter has filtered out their response…
In a very simple and crude experiment I measured the speed of responses from contact forms and recorded how many contact forms actually worked correctly. I found that the average response time (ignoring the companies that did not get back to me at all) was 2 days. I also found that 40%, YES forty percent of the contact forms did not work – they either resulted in an error or I received a timeout message.
Let me tell you now, if I use a contact form on a website, I am using it because I expect a relatively speedy response and I expect my enquiry to be seen or heard. I don’t believe that I am that unique – surely my expectations would be “average”? If you have a website contact form, here are some tips:
- Run weekly checks to ensure your contact form is working. Nothing fancy, just input a couple of test enquiries at the end of each week!
- Forward contact form enquiries to GROUPS (if you have the luxury of more than one staff member that is) rather than one individual – share the load and create some accountability.
- Consider asking more information from your website visitor, try to extract as much information as you can – this will help you supply a more relevant and informed response. (Don’t overload the user with 100s of fields though!)
- Consider directing your contact forms enquiries to cell phones (using simple email or SMS), a speedy response is one of the most important aspects of gaining new business.
- If you can’t regularly check the enquiries that are coming in via a contact form, perhaps you should remove it from your website.
- If you’re getting too much spam via your contact form, add a image validation field, or use some method to stop spam bots using your contact form.
If you you’re not sure how to handle the technical aspects of my above suggestions, contact your website developer or perhaps your hosting company, they should be able to assist you. Or, you could of course contact SAFI – we’d only be too happy to help – and of course you can use our contact form to ask us a question!
