Every Required Field Costs You Enquiries

Contact forms are mostly built from the recipient's point of view. You want to know everything straight away so you can assess the enquiry. For the visitor that creates a hurdle that grows with every field.

The arithmetic behind it

Every additional required field costs a share of your enquiries. A form with ten fields delivers fewer but more detailed enquiries. One with three fields delivers more but shorter ones. The question is what you are short of: information or customers.

What can almost always be cut

• Title as a required field. You do not strictly need it to reply, and it forces a categorisation not everyone wants to make.
• Phone number as required. Anyone who wants to be called enters it voluntarily. As a required field it reliably deters.
• Company name, address, industry. Everything you will learn in ten seconds of conversation.
• The budget field. Most people do not know, and that is exactly where they abandon.

What actually belongs in it

A name, one way to reach them, and a free text field for the request. Everything else optional and clearly marked as optional.

The points that are often technically missing

• A visible confirmation after sending. Without it nobody knows whether the message arrived. Many send it a second time, others assume nothing worked.
• An error message that names the error. "Please check your entries" helps nobody.
• Spam protection that does not punish the user. A hidden field only machines fill in works without a clicking task.
• A test by you, monthly. Forms fail silently, and nobody notices for weeks.

If you have the impression that visitors arrive but enquiries do not, we are happy to take a look at your form.