Points To Improve Your Website Contact Form

No website is complete is without the contact form. Many people do not pay much importance to the contact form but you have to know that it is the one the most vital parts of your website. If it is not properly developed you might end up losing your prospective clients, which is a heavy price to pay. Many at times it can be frustrating and confusing to the user, so plenty of thought is put into developing a contact form understanding its significance. Here are some tips that will help you developing a good contact form.

Offer Contact Options

With the help of a contact form, you can turn a semi-interested customer into a client. Every contact form should be helpful to a user and should be developed keeping the user perspective in mind. While being helpful to users and useful in categorizing the type of request in order to prioritize and for data mining later–many drop down boxes do not provide with sufficient options to choose from. This will cause confusion among your users. So always, make the options available like “others” which will be easy for the user and can help him with not being confused especially when he is not able to determine the type of need.

Keep it Short

Who likes to write long stories in a contact form, neither does anyone have the time to do it. Therefore, it is better to make use of radio buttons and check boxes. This will reduce the time spent by the user but be sure to label them correctly and avoid technical terms or jargon’s which will be a big turn off for the user. Try to keep it as simple as possible.
Reduce the number of compulsory fields on your contact form. Ask what is needed and do not burden them with a lot of compulsory information.  Limit the number of compulsory questions.
If you see certain contact, forms are annoyingly long. So try to keep your contact form limited to the necessary information only. Sometimes users will leave by seeing a long contact form.

Submission Confirmation

Another problem that you must have noticed after submitting a contact form is that you receive an error message, a blank page or you will be sent back to the contact page. How can the user be sure that the information has been sent? Therefore, to avoid that always have a thank you page assuring them that their request has been submitted. Always make sure that this page is properly working at all times.

Be Careful with Captcha

Many contact forms have CAPTCHA, which is very much needed to cut down on spam. On many contact forms, I have seen that the image verification is so distorted that you cannot read it and keep on entering it and it comes back with errors. So if you are using a distorted image have an audio clip that will speak out the letters and numbers in the image for you. The best option is have a CAPTCHA that is quiet readable. Do not let it be a turn off for the users.

Source : - http://www.dragonblogger.com/6-points-improve-website-contact-form/