These days maintaining a website is a challenge, considering the ever increasing number of websites on the web. A website has to face a stiff competition from several other websites that offer the best in the best manner. In such a scenario, it is imperative to have a proper and advanced website with all the necessary features. Only great features can improve the performance and functionality of the website, and boost its conversion rate as well. User Friendly Contact us form is one of the most important aspects of a website. If created in a right manner, Contact Us Form can help considerably in improving the conversion rate and sales rate of a website However, this feature is neglected by a majority of websites.
Most of websites do not realize the importance and benefits offered by a well designed ‘contact us’ form. This in itself defeats the very purpose of website development. Website is developed in order to reach out to a wide section of audience and make them contact you for business purpose. In a website, the only way your visitors and customers can contact you is through a contact form. The contact form lets them enter their queries. Therefore, it needs not be told how important a contact form is for a website. At the same time, it is also equally important to have a well designed, user friendly and attractive contact form. Mentioned below are some of the great tips for designing a user friendly contact us form that will help you in increasing the conversion rate of your business.
Keep it simple :
First of all, you need to understand that when it comes to developing a contact form, it should not be very long, and also should not have annoying questions. It is important to keep the contact form simple and user friendly. Complicated things do not really work in your favor and hence they should be avoided. It needs to be kept in mind that visitors do not like to think more when they navigate to your site. If your form has anything obscure that makes them confuse, they will simply move on to some other website. You should ask your users for the minimum information. What visitors look for is- fast and immediate actions. If your contact form is designed in such a manner, it is likely to attract more visitors and certainly helps in turning them into potential customers. Thus it helps to increase the conversion rate of your business.
Keep it short :
There is no point developing a lengthy contact us form. In fact, it will remain unused. No one has time to go through and fill up a lengthy form. Do not add unnecessary queries by asking for personal information of the customers. This is really not fair. The customer has not really spoken to you yet.
Enough query space :
More often than not, most of websites constrict their query space text box with character limits. This is not appropriate. If the user is unable to enter his complete query, he may get irritated and consequently may leave your site. If your website’s contact us form does not allow query submission beyond a certain extent, then it would work in your favor if you provide a file uploading option. This will allow the user to upload his query file with as many queries as he wants.
Make it approachable :
Ensure that your contact us page is approachable and that visitors find it easy to go through it. If your contact us page is uninviting and is hidden, it would not serve its purpose.
Captcha Readability :
An important feature that a good contact us form should have is the Captcha readability. This is the only way that lets you to restrict the Spam submissions in the contact form. Also, it is equally important to have a thank you page. It holds immense importance for users. If the user does not get to see a thank you page, he will not be sure about whether his query has been successfully submitted or not. Therefore, it is imperative to develop a complete contact form with an assuring and relevant message in the page that will tell the users that you will revert to their query.
Properly working links :
Another important thing to ensure for the proper working of a contact form is that, all links should work properly. If your visitors or users come across any broken link at a point when they were looking to send off for a number of quotes from different websites in one sitting, they would not really stay and wait to find out if it will start working after some time. In fact, you cannot really expect them to come back. Therefore, it is must to test all the links to make sure that they all are working perfectly.
Reassure your visitors :
When a user lands on a contact us page of a website, it is quite natural for him to feel a bit apprehensive about the credibility of a website. There is always a hesitation in deciding whether they can trust on the website and details provided by it or not. All you need to do is to convince them that their entire information will be kept 100% safe and will not be passed to anyone else.
Call to action :
It is important to have a call to action button in your contact us page. A ‘call to action’ is basically a message which demands an action from your visitor in the most encouraging way possible. This button may ask visitors- ‘Get Your Merchant Account Provider Quote Now’ or ‘Start Your Payment Service Provider Today’. This gives them one last little push that makes them click that button or follow that advice to reach a goal.
Give alternate contact details :
It is important that you provide alternative contact details in case your form is not working. You should try to include your address if possible as this helps customers to feel reassured that you are a real company with a real office and not just pilfering their details. It lends enough credibility to your website to be trusted easily by users.
Testing :
Developing a contact form alone does not finish your task. It is equally important to do a complete QC testing of the form. In fact, this is a very important stage of the entire project. However, the testing should be done by keeping users feedback in mind. You should also ensure that there is no loose thread in the development. Make sure that you check messages, codes and the final appearance of form.
These are some of the most effective tips for designing a user friendly contact us form that ensures that your website fetches quality traffic and the conversion rate is improved by a great extent.
[Pictures purchased from Fotolia.com]
About The Author
First of all, the content of this article is great. But mainly, the way you have represented this article with graphics that is really STUNNING. Amazing. I love these graphics. Do you created these just for this post?
Yes please. Pictures purchased from Fotolia for this article.
Thx for the yip m8!