If you do not have a contact form, people probably tell you that you need one or you have been reading that you need one. Something to generate a lead will help your site greatly.
Your form could be for general inquiries or perhaps a form for visitors to ask questions as prompts for possible future posts. You might even have several different forms for different business services.
Your visitors arrive at your site because there is something there that they are interesting in at least seeing. In the case you do not have it, that form can help you fill that need.
What type of sites need a contact form or some type of lead form?
Answer: EVERY SITE!!!
It does not matter if you have a mommy blog or a regular journal. You never know when you might get questions asking for advice or even inquiries to advertise on your website. It could also mean other types of opportunities like products given in exchange for a review.
Not all inquiries are suited or are on topic for your blog entries, so the form is a great place to make sure you have a door open for your visitors.
In regards to your contact form, you should at least have the following fields:
- Name
- Website
- Subject
- Message
- Captcha or Re-captcha type verification to prevent spam
If you have special questions you want visitors to answer in your form, like asking them if they want to subscribe to your site’s newsletter, you can add that.
There are many types of forms available to bloggers and site owners for most content management systems. There are quite a few contact form plugins available for WordPress alone.
I personally install Gravity Forms on my clients’s sites and use it on my own. It is very user-friendly and allows you to drag and drop fields in to create your own form. The plugin does cost, but is is well worth it.
Click here to visit Gravity forms. I will be sure to follow up with a thorough review of Gravity Forms as well.
Do you have a contact form? How long did you have your website open until you put up some sort of lead generation? Is your form standard or do you have any special questions that you ask visitors to answer?
I have generated a few leads using contact forms. But those were for my friends having offline businesses. I just wanted to test if online forms could help generating leads for offline businesses – It does!
Very useful information and I will definitely give gravity forms a go if not too expensive.
Thanks
Colin
The single site license is just shy of $40, which is pretty good since that plugin has great support and you would get updates for it.
i rarely use contact form. mainly because not targeting to collect list. however, you did have a point here, might design as many as possible my own contact form for just everything.
people uses contact form for targeting their customers or visitors which is very effecting way for any business.
interesting article about contact form and most important fields of forms ideas thanks for sharing
To be honest i was ignoring contact form before reading this post, thanks for putting your ideas!
Great post. It is amazing how many blogs that I have come across that do not have contact us forms. Some of them have lost business as I would have contacted them if I could.
Having contact form is another way of saying that everybody is welcome to your site. You can create a database from this for future reference. Protect and respect the privacy of your visitors by not sharing their details to other people.
True, having a contact form means making the visitors feel welcome to interact with the blog owner whenever the need arises. There should be some way to communicate with your readers and I think a contact form sets up that technique.
I read on another blog that contact forms were not worth the trouble any more and I have just been using my email and mobile phone number, but this has given me food for thought. I had a free form before on an old site I had in the UK, I’m in Ireland now. I think it was these guys: 123contactform.com, it did the job and was free but I will have a look at Gravity forms, thanks for the info, I’m gonna get one up on my site, definitely can’t hurt and if it generates more business then I’m all for it. Thanks!
I personally dislike contact forms. I would always prefer an email address or a live chat on the site. One thing that bugs me about forms is that you don’t have an email address to follow up with. Also, some people have said that it makes the site feel more welcoming and personal. However, to me contact forms actually seem impersonal, and an email address with a name in it sounds a lot better.
I’d say that there is no reason to have to pick between one or the other. Just give users a contact form and an email and let them have their pick. Some will prefer one medium and some will prefer another.
If you do have a contact form, I would recommend not using to many fields. I think just having an email address box, a subject box, and a general box for the body of the message is sufficient.
For any kind of website contact form is very important,website without a contact form is a big no.Everybody should implement
the contact form as it acts as bridge between the customer and website owner.