Marketing
5 1/2 Ways To Get More Website Enquiries
I was sitting here drinking a cup of tea and scratching my head thinking - “I love form’s they are possibly my most favourite thing on the internet”. Sad I know, yet the reason for this obsession is simply that without something as ’simple’ as a web based form, we’d loose a method of contact, not be able to capture vital information and things like web based applications like myspace, facebook etc just wouldn’t exist.
I’d even go as far to say, something like a good form, can be the building blocks, of the next big thing.
Without a user filling out a form, there is no point in the form, and a non productive form is like a chocolate teapot, yummy, but not practical - although saying that, there is nothing wrong with a yummy form, but it’s got to be usable.
So I’ve decided to tell you 5 1/2 ways to get more website enquiries. SHHH!
No 1.
Find the form you want to improve, and firstly submit it. Fill out this form with all your own details, time yourself, and have someone talking to you at the same time continously. If you manage to fill out the form in good time, then what the hell are you doing reading this article, go away and do some real work… Other wise you may already be starting to realise that your form isn’t as usable as you thought. Perhaps the questions were not clear, you couldn’t tab easily to the next field, there are too many questions, some questions don’t make sense. Perhaps it was even hard to marry up which field belonged to which title.
Ok some things you can do to help. First of all, if you have too many questions (the form is quite long), this will put off your users, if you got bored, or didn’t even finish the form, you’ll see that yourself. So what you need to do is define the purpose of the form again. I say again, cause I’m assuming you tried to define one in the first place, if not, go find a loaded gun, aim it at yourself and squeeze the trigger, not pull.
Ok if you think that it was hard to see which field belonged to which heading, consider starting this form from scratch, defining the headings close to the side of the field, above it, highlighting fields with colour, are often good ways to fix this. Don’t be afraid to make headings a bit bigger. Your users with poor eye sight will appreciate this.
Remove any fields which you don’t really need, try and obtain perhaps one or two pieces of ‘form specific’ information at most from your user. Any more than that, they will see a huge form, and think sod that. You can also limit the address of the user if you need that to just ‘First line of address’ and ‘postal code’. You don’t actually need anymore do you…
No 2.
Use CSS to beautify your forms. You don’t have to go over the top, but things like borders, background colours, captialisation, text colour. These are all great ways to brighten up that dim looking form. If you look at the form and you feel good, then the user will feel good, unless your me, I always feel good and thus cannot be trusted. A well designed form should have an aura about it, it shouldn’t as such LOOK pretty, it should feel it.
No 3.
Give some encouragement to your user, when competition is tougher, you’ve even got to sell you forms to them. Now if you haven’t got any encouragement on your form, you are severely limiting your target audience to those who don’t care what they do on their computers (so most of the UK population - only kidding).
What can you do to sort this?
Well its not as hard as it sounds, most are free too. Firstly consider setting up a SSL certificate for your forms, then you can promote your forms as being secure! WOO, people love secure forms, you are sending their personal data remember (if thats the purpose of your form).
Next up, re-assure them that this form is, quick, fast, easy, with all these buzz words I’m even feeling like I wanna go fill out a form, any form…
Give incentives, free shit, people love free stuff, perhaps its an offer to save on your product, 20% off, 50% off, something riddiculous, even if you’re loosing it on your product, hopefuly with these changes you’ll get more enquiries!
No 4.
Ok so this one is kinda relating to the other one before, but it’s still a good one. Show recent enquries, as basically testimonials. We helped Mr Blah from Blah. Thank you to these people who enquried: Mr blah, Mr Blah Blah, and so on. Now you could do this for real, but this requires a database and some php or other sucky alternative to php OR you could just make up some frome genuine enquries maybe. People love testimonials, how many times have you yourself gone “oh look at that testimonial, theres no way thats true”, then you’ve filled out the form, its a subconcious thing I feel, and it does work. It’s that feel good factor again.
Now with this point, don’t go shoving it anywhere, keep it to one side, limit it, visible but invisible. You know what I mean, if not read back to my gun reference. Thanks.
No 5.
Oh its the final one, we got here fast, well, quickly, lets make something up. Naa not really. I wanna talk briefly about usability. This stems from validation on fields for when users make mistakes, and some copy to talk about what they need to do, no matter how obvious it is to you. Sometimes its worth creating a new column, or doing a nice javascript mouse over. Have fun, make it usable, but cool. It can be cool to be square you know, like me. O Yeah!…
No 5 1/2.
Ok now this is a handy way to sort your forms, but unfortunatley, by the time I’ve waffled on like this, I’ve already written half of it and I have to stop. Sorry!
Ok I hope you enjoyed this.
Thanks
Wuup Team
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