Providing a brief contact form on your website, your social media pages and any other places where you will be interacting with customers is one of the easiest ways to get customer signups and learn more about your customer base.
Contact forms have several different uses and there are some best practices you should follow when creating a contact form to use for your customers. So, are you ready to find out how to make a contact form? Let's review some important points about contact forms.
How Contact Forms can be Used
Contact forms have a wide variety of purposes. They can be used to collect customer contact information, such as name, email, telephone number and so on. They can also be used to allow customers to contact you with questions or feedback.
Contact Form for Email Newsletter: To get people to subscribe to your email newsletter, place contact forms on multiple pages of your company website and social media pages. This provides many different chances for visitors to opt in to receive your email newsletter so you can get your message out to lots of customers at once. All you really need in this case is the person's email address, but many businesses also request the contact's name, company or industry. When crafting your email contact form, decide which information is essential and which is irrelevant. You should also clearly mark any fields that are required with an asterisk or a red outline, to distinguish them from fields that are optional.
Contact Form for SMS Coupons: An SMS or text message contact form will be slightly different than an email contact form. You will be requesting a customer's mobile phone number and possible name.
Contact Form for Customer Question: Many companies provide contact forms on their website that allow customers to ask a question, submit the form and receive an answer from a customer service representative quickly. In this case, you will want to include a large enough text box for a customer to explain their question or issue. You should also ask the customer to select the best way and time to contact them (email, telephone call, etc.) and provide the corresponding information, either an email address or a telephone number.
Contact Form for Customer Feedback: On many retail websites, businesses provide brief contact forms that allow customers to submit feedback about their experience, or about their products and services. If you decide to use these feedback contact forms, there are several places you can put them. Many businesses choose to have the form pop up when the customers have visited several pages, or after they make a purchase. Other businesses leave the contact form on the side of their website pages so customers can access them at any time. A customer feedback form may be longer than a regular contact form. You can ask the customer to rate their experience based on a number of factors. You should also include one or more text boxes so the customers can explain their comments in detail.
Contact Form Best Practices
Building a contact form is simple with form builder software. Most form builder tools offer contact form templates to make creation easy. All you need to do is input your fields of information, label your questions correctly and test your form. So let's focus on best practices.
Contact forms, above all, should be simple. They should be easy to understand, easy to fill out and include only the questions you absolutely need. If a contact form is difficult for a customer to use, they will either just skip it (and you lose the chance to connect with that customer) or they will call your customer service team instead (which can take up valuable time and staff resources). So keep it simple.
Contact forms absolutely must be mobile friendly. Many people (many many people!) now access the internet on their phone. If the contact form does not display properly or does not function correctly on a customer's mobile device, you may have lost the opportunity to communicate with that customer.
With most contact forms, you will be collecting some sort of personal contact information from the customer so it's a good idea to explicitly state your privacy policy or provide a link where customers can view it. It goes without saying that you should not share any personal information such as name, email or telephone number with external companies or contacts.
Clearly specify the purpose of the contact form at the top of the form. If it is a form for an email newsletter signup, for example, include a title at the top: "Sign Up for Our Email Newsletter!" The reason for labelling your form is to reduce the chance for a customer to accidentally submit a form for the wrong purpose. If a customer submits a question in an email newsletter signup form, thinking that it is just a general contact form, they may not receive a response. Their email address will simply be automatically added to your email newsletter list and they will not receive an answer to their question.
Many contact forms include a captcha, a visual or audio test that anyone filling out the form must complete in order to submit the form successfully. Captchas are simple for humans, but are difficult for computers. A captcha ensures that a real person is submitting the form and not an automated spam robot.
Always test your contact forms before you place them on your website or anywhere else! If there is a spelling error, a functionality issue, or if you just want to make some changes, it is much better to update the form before your customers start using it. You should regularly test all your forms on an ongoing basis to ensure that the message is going to the right place when you click "Submit."
If you have multiple boxes, such as for name, date or telephone number, be clear about how to enter information. This makes it less likely for customers to get confused and fill out the form incorrectly. Informative pop-ups that appear when you hover over a box are a simple way to help customers. So, if you have two boxes for your customers' names, include a pop-up that specifies where first and last name should go. Providing a format example is also helpful. For example, if you have a date box, include an example date format that tells customers to enter the date as dd/mm/yyyy or mm/dd/yy.
Additional Contact Form Tips
Once you make a contact form, you need to ensure that you are following up with any questions or feedback in a timely manner. If the customer has taken the time to contact your business, a member of your customer service team should reply personally, addressing the issue.
Since it is often not possible to respond immediately, ensure that your contact form is set up with an autoresponder that will email the customer a response right away. This message should be brief yet informative, letting the customer know that their question or comment has been submitted successfully and you will respond as soon as possible.
Provide multiple ways for your customers to get in contact with you: phone, email, live chat and social media messages such as private messages or posts on Facebook or direct messages or tweets on Twitter. The more communication methods you provide, the more likely it is that your customers will get in touch with you in the way that is most convenient for them. This provides you with multiple opportunities to interact, gain feedback, boost customer satisfaction and make sales.
Make sure that your contact forms are prominent and that your customers can find them easily. If a customer has a question or a comment, they will be frustrated if they cannot find a way to tell you. Make it simple for customers to find your forms. You can make the contact form a bright color, keep it in a prominent spot on the page or use other techniques.
Make your contact form consistent with your company brand. The form should have your logo at the top, your signature colors, graphics and so on.
If your contact form is for the purpose of eliciting feedback from customers, have a friendly greeting on your contact form. "We would love to hear your suggestions!" or "Please let us know if you have any questions. We're always here for you."
Some questions should be avoided if they are not absolutely necessary. Many customers will not fill out forms if they are required to enter personal information such as their town/city or gender. And other information is simply not necessary to include. You don't want your forms to look cluttered. So don't ask for information such as "Preferred Salutation: Mr., Ms., Mrs." It is not necessary and it will just waste your customers' time.
Create Contact Forms with SimplyCast
We offer contact form templates and an easy to use contact form builder. It's simple to use even if you have never made a contact form or used our software before. We provide many different form templates, and you can easily drag and drop elements into your form. You can edit contact forms at any time in the form builder, and you can copy and paste the form builder code onto your website, social media pages or wherever you want it.
The great thing about using a contact form from a marketing automation solution, such as SimplyCast, is that as soon as a visitor inputs their information and clicks "Submit," their data is automatically organized and stored in a personal customer profile. This data profile can be used immediately by the automated marketing solution to send an email or text message to the customer, put them in a specific targeted group, and any other number of actions.
Sign up for a free SimplyCast account today to start building your own contact forms.
