On today’s episode of The Engaging Marketeer, I want to talk very briefly about website forms.
Now, bear with me. I want to talk about the kind of forms you get when you go on a website, and you fill in a contact form – so, your name, your email address, your enquiry – you know. That sort of form.
Most business websites have sh*t forms, for want of a better word. This is because they haven’t really thought about the information they need, versus the information they’re actually asking for.
So, say for example you’re a digital marketing agency, like us. If you go onto a digital marketing agency’s website, the form on the Contact Us page might be behind a link that you click, saying Contact Us.
Your own website might be the same. On the homepage, there might be a button that says Contact Us, which goes to a form, and you might be asking for the person’s name – that’s the basic information of what you’re going to need. First name, surname – you might ask for their email address so that you can contact them via email, or possibly even add it to your database so you could email them afterwards (I’ll come on to that in a moment).
You might ask for their phone number so that you can phone them up and speak to them; you might ask for their location, so maybe that’s their town or city around the UK; you might ask for their county or their state or their province, depending on where you’re based; you might ask for their postcode or their zip code; you might ask for the nature of their inquiry, which could be a free text field or a drop down; you might ask how they heard about you, which is, of course, important customer research, to find out which channel of your marketing is working; you might even ask for a landline number as well as a mobile, and their fax number – because, believe me, I still see forms with fax numbers on.
You could ask for any of these things, but the most important thing you’ve got to think about is WHY.
Have you considered the purpose of your form’s fields?
Every piece of information you ask for, every field that you add to this form, makes it less and less likely that someone is going to fill it in. Right down to splitting up the first name and the surname.
If you have only one field for name, then they’ve got the option. If you have the first name and surname, they’ve got to fill in both of those – that’s two fields, and some people may not want to fill both of those in. If you ask for a phone number, WHY are you asking for a phone number?
If it’s just a web form where they’re downloading something or inquiring, and you don’t need a phone number, then don’t ask for it. Because if you ask for it, and you don’t need it, they will not fill it in, or they will wonder WHY you’re asking for it.
We all know why you’re asking for it. You’re going to have someone phone them up. But if you’re not going to have someone phoning up, then why the bloody hell are you asking for it in the first place?
To reiterate – the more fields you add, the less likely it is that someone is going to fill it in.
If you ask for an email address, or an alternate email address – do you need it? If they’re requesting a callback, do you need to get an email address from them? Do you need to get a drop down on what the actual inquiry is about? You don’t.
Because, here’s an idea – depending on which page they came from, or which page they’re on when they fill in the form, you can actually populate the form automatically in the back end with that information, so you know what page they were on, you know what page they looked at before they filled in the form, and that way you don’t have to ask them what the nature of the inquiry is, or what they’re interested in, because you already know. Because that’s the page they were on in the first place.
The more you can limit the information in the form, the more likely it is that somebody is going to inquire with you. Now, I mentioned about adding people to an email database – I get it. Somebody fills in a form, they’re going to put in their details – their name, their email address, their phone number. Naturally, you’re going to want them to add them to your database so that you can contact them. Now, you have to ask permission for this, or at least notify them you’re going to do it, and get them to confirm that it’s okay – it’s what we call the GDPR rule. So, there has to be an opt-in checkbox that they tick to say, “I confirm that you can contact me.” That kind of stuff.
Now, I’m not going to go into the specifics of that, because this is a podcast, not a GDPR lecture. If you have too many fields, fields you do not need, get rid of them.
If you have two fields for first name and surname, and you’re not adding them to a database, get rid of the second field – just have one. Cut the fields right down to the bare minimum, because this will increase the likelihood that somebody is going to fill in the form.
Put simply – the more fields you have, the less likely someone is going to fill it in.
The design of the form is also really important. Does it look clean? Does it look like something somebody’s going to want to fill in? If it’s an old form, with very small fields and tiny font, then my guess is no.
It needs to look nice. It needs to be big and bold and bright and beautiful – why would anyone want to fill in something that looks crap? Yet, most people don’t care about this on their websites. They think a form’s just a form – what does it matter? Well, if you don’t do it properly, no one’s going to use.
The last thing I want to cover is that the reason most forms don’t work at all is, say if have a website, and you have a contact form on there, and you want people to contact you – no one’s doing it, because they don’t really want to speak to you. Your customers want to know how much your service is going to be for them, and how quickly can you move, and they want that information now. They don’t want to have to speak to you.
So, here’s an idea – why not have data capture that gives them that information? We did this for a client years ago – got rid of the contact form and had a quote request instead. That’s what people want – an instant quote. Of course, those fields then went into the database as an email inquiry, which allowed them to follow them up straightaway. Depending on how quickly you follow up, and how quickly you actually convert them, and how good the quote was – that’s turning a website that had very few inquiries, because nobody wanted to fill in a contact form, to a website that was converting very highly.
Your customers just want to know what things cost without speaking to someone. There needs to be a reason to fill in a contact form. This could be an instant quote, or a free download – there needs to be something of value, or solve their problem. You need to show them what you can do, which is going to make them more likely to work with you – especially if all your competitors have is a contact form, which nobody really wants to fill in anyway, unless they absolutely have to.
So, that’s all I wanted to leave you with today on The Engaging Marketeer. Have a look at the forms on your website, and if you find nobody is filling them in, there could be a very good reason for it.
That’s it from me this week – catch you on the next podcast!
About your host:
Darren has worked within digital marketing since the last century, and was the first in-house web designer for video games retailer GAME in the UK, known as Electronics Boutique in the States. After co-founding his own agency, Engage Web, in 2009, Darren has worked with clients around the world, including Australia, Canada and the USA.
iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/engaging-marketeer/id1612454837
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/darrenjamieson/
Engaging Marketeer: https://engagingmarketeer.com
Engage Web: https://www.engageweb.co.uk
