Where Enquiries Go to Die

The conversion page (contact form, checkout, and so on) is where most businesses lose the people they worked hardest to attract, and it often doesn't get audited.

Go and fill in your own form now. On your phone. As if you were a stranger. Time how long it took.

Here is what we see typically go wrong, roughly in order of how much damage it does.

It asks for too much. Every field is a small negotiation, and the visitor is trying to assess whether they should give you all this information in exchange for a benefit they are not yet certain of. First name, last name, company size, industry, postcode, budget range, how did you hear about us, a message box with a minimum length. Each one was added by somebody reasonable who wanted better qualified enquiries. Ask for the minimum that lets you respond intelligently. You can ask the rest in the reply once they have engaged.

It asks the wrong things. Budget questions early in a relationship read as a screening test, and people who are unsure of the answer abandon rather than guess. If you need to qualify, do it with a question about the problem, not about their wallet.

It gives nothing back. The visitor presses submit and receives a grey line of text saying "Thanks, we'll be in touch." They now have no idea whether that means an hour or a fortnight, whether a human read it, or whether it went anywhere at all. Tell them exactly what happens next and when. "You will get a reply from a person before 5pm tomorrow" is worth more than any amount of design.

It is broken and nobody knows. We've seen this before. A mail setting changes, a plugin updates, a notification routes to an inbox nobody watches. Send yourself a test enquiry through the live form once a month, make this a recurring habit. Not only does it test if your forms work, but it makes you a mystery shopper who sees how your team deals with the "enquiry", which we'll dive into more in the next chapter.

It is the only option. Some people will not use a form under any circumstances. A visible phone number, an email address written out rather than hidden behind a link, and a way to send a message without a form will catch enquiries a form never will. The number of businesses that hide their phone number to protect against time-wasters, while complaining about a lack of enquiries, is remarkable.

It is buried. Make the contact form on your main service page accessible in one click, don't make it harder for the user to start a conversation with you.

There is a broader principle underneath all of this. Every additional step between interest and contact removes some proportion of the people who were interested.

Take one field out of your form this week. Then measure. Then take another one out.