Contact forms provide a convenient way for people to get in touch with a business, and are frequently used on websites and other platforms. Unfortunately their design is often neglected and tends to be far less effective than it should be.
If you want to fix that and actually create effective contact forms for your business, there are a few steps you should take:
- Stick to the essential fields
Try to limit the number of fields in your contact form to only the bare essentials. In most contact forms that would be the name, email address, and content fields – but some may require more than that.
One other field you may want to include is a subject or category list. That will give you an easy way to segment the data that you obtain, and manage it more effectively.
- Use a single-column layout
Single-column layouts are less distracting, uncomplicated, and can be filled out faster – which is why you should always use them for your contact forms. Try to make the fields as uniform as possible as well, so that it is easier on the eyes.
- Make sure its mobile-friendly
A significant number of people using your businesses’ contact form are probably going to be on mobile devices – so it is important that it is mobile-friendly. More specifically the design should be responsive, so that it adapts to different screen sizes.
- Position labels above the fields
While there are several different ways to position field labels, the most effective tends to be above the field. In that position the label will be read before the field, and clearly associated with it.
On top of that it is easier to make contact forms that are responsive if your labels are positioned above fields rather than beside them.
- Always add simple CAPTCHA
Without CAPTCHA of some kind your contact form is going to get tons of spam from bots – so it is necessary to include it. At the same time you should try to make it as simple as possible, seeing as if people get CAPTCHA errors they aren’t likely to complete the form.
Make no mistake manually creating a contact form can be a bit tricky and will require some knowledge of HTML and CSS in order to optimize it. That being said you could use a more user-friendly contact form maker, such as AidaForm.
Overall the tips listed above should help you to improve the user experience of your contact forms – and their effectiveness at the same time. Be sure you carefully consider every decision you make about the design of your contact forms so that they are in line with that approach.
