Whether you are a freelancer or have a small agency, your website is a means to find new clients. In many cases, it is the first contact that your potential customers will have with the company. For this reason, you should make sure to include your best projects, testimonials from your clients, case studies, a brief explanation of the work process and, a contact page.
Although the contact page is considered as a standard section in every website, in many cases, it is not given adequate attention. As a freelance agency or professional, you know that this is the main means of contact between your clients and your company. For this reason, we mention some tips to optimize your contact form and be able to get timely information about your client and your project. In this way, you will save time and the communication process will be streamlined.
Ask the right questions
If you wish to extend your contact form in order to obtain accurate information about your potential clients and have a greater understanding of the type of project they wish to develop, you should make sure you ask the right questions.
In these cases, since the length of the form will be longer than the standard format, it may be beneficial to separate the questions into sections. This technique can also be helpful to list all the information you need to know about your potential clients, even before moving on to the design phase of the form. Some of the mandatory sections are the following:
- Contact information: These are the data that are requested in any standard contact form such as name and email address.
- Information about the company: This information allows you to understand more about the company and brand and it is necessary information for any project. For this section, you could ask for a brief description or indicate the item to which they are dedicated. In addition, you can ask for the address of the website.
- Information about the project: Once you have general information about the company, you can go to the project data. Some fields that could be of use to you are the type of project, the estimated budget and the estimated time in which you want the project to be completed.
It is advisable to have at least one question for each section. You should think carefully about the question that will allow you to obtain accurate information and understand your customers and their order.
Consider the type of question and how to present it
Once you have all the questions you need to ask your clients, you should consider how to present them. Some of these questions are straightforward and the client will not spend much time completing the information. But there are others that the client may carefully consider how to answer them. To prevent your potential customers from spending more time than they should on filling out the form, you should consider how to present such questions. Not all questions should have a field to answer. You could use checkboxes with options. A slider can be more effective to indicate the estimated budget. Use various resources so that your contact form can be filled out by the client more quickly.
Remember to place the “Other” option in sliding menus or checkboxes in case the customer’s response does not correspond to the options you have included in that section.
Consider the length of the form
By creating a form or contact page where you can extract important information about your client’s project, it is obvious that the extension of the form will be affected.
If you have potential customers who are willing to work with you, the length of the form should not be a problem. You will receive clients who really want to work with you. Some of them will be in doubt and they will want to know your methodology, the number of corrections allowed in each phase and payment plan. To encourage both customers to fill out your contact form, it is essential to ensure its usability.
As mentioned earlier, use various types of fields such as check boxes and drop-down menus according to the question you are asking your customers. This allows reducing the time the client will spend filling in information, so it can be a long form, but it can be completed in 5 minutes. Another technique may be to divide the various sections of the form into steps, as is usually done when making an online purchase. In this way, by dividing the process into steps, it is much more comfortable for the client and prevents him from feeling overwhelmed by seeing a large number of questions and options available.
Choose an appropriate contact form for your business
The type of improvement you make to your contact page also depends entirely on your marketing strategy. The short and simple forms usually have a higher conversion rate. If you have a small business and you are just starting, then it is advisable to keep a short contact form. We encourage you to make improvements on your website taking the aforementioned tips into account. You can save time by responding to emails from users who contact you through the form since you have certain information about the project.
Conclusion
You already know the importance of the contact form. As a freelance agency or professional, a standard form is not enough. For each of your clients, you should start to ask important questions and in general, the process can be quite slow. Optimizing your contact form allows you to understand certain details of the client and the project. As a result, the subsequent communication with your client will be faster because you already know what the client wants. You should ask for details that may vary depending on the type of project and the client you are dealing with.
Author Bio:
Melissa Crooks is Content Writer who writes for Hyperlink InfoSystem, one of the leading app development companies in New York, USA & India that holds the best team of skilled and expert app developers. She is a versatile tech writer and loves exploring latest technology trends, entrepreneur and startup column.