Online Contact Us Form: Does Yours Really Work?

You’ve got your website set up because you know that you need to have one.  And your phone number is on your website in case potential customers want to call you.  You’d rather that they did because that’s what you’re used to and that’s what your business is setup to handle.

You’ve put up a ‘contact us’ form and maybe even a ‘request a quote’ form because you’ve been told that you need to have it.  And other websites, maybe even your competitors have it, so you figure it’s easy enough to get your web guy to add to your site too.  However, you’re not getting many leads that way so you’re not sure why everyone insists you need one.

But maybe your contact us form isn’t working properly.  Have you run the following checklist of tests:

• Have you tested it from another email address that isn’t related to your domain name?  Does it work?  Sometimes spam filters can block email addresses and you don’t realise it.
• Do you send all contact enquiries from your website to at least 2 active email addresses?  This ensures that if one email address is unavailable for whatever reason then the query is still received.
• Do you send prospects a confirmation email to let them know that you’ve received their query and will get back to them as soon as possible?  This is important because if for some reason you don’t phone or email to follow up then at least they have your contact information so they can contact you.

If you answered no to any of the above then that could be the reason why you’re not receiving any email enquiries.  It isn’t that potential customers aren’t visiting your site and filling in the contact us form.  It’s that you’re not getting the emails and not only missing business but frustrating those consumers that took the time to fill out the form in the first place.

I was looking for quotes yesterday and did a Google search to find potential suppliers.  I clicked on a mix of ads and organic listings.  If the website wasn’t helpful then I skipped to the next one because there was no shortage of choice.

I ended up contacting 3 suppliers via their online forms.  24 hours later not one of them has contacted me.  I didn’t get a single email confirmation.  I’m a genuine prospect and I’m keen to go ahead as soon as possible but I don’t want to waste time with companies that aren’t keen for my business.

Does your online form work?  Maybe now is the time to test it and make sure that you’re not pushing prospects away with sloppy web practices.