Contact Us Form VS a Targeted Sales Enquiry Form

How many websites have you found that use the general ‘Contact Us Form’ for customer sales enquiries and Call-to-Actions?

Imagine your customer has found your website and now they need more information on your products or services. Or maybe they would like a sales rep to contact them to demonstrate and price your products or services.

Some personality types will call you instantly, and hopefully get through to the right department to get things underway. Some personality types would rather fill in a quick online form and get someone to call them back, or just answer a few sales orientated questions to help get them over ‘the line’.

Often web designers (who often don’t like having to build complex online forms) will just use the good old Contact Us form for these targeted enquiries. We feel that this is a failure in the customers Usability Experience (UX) and can hinder your sales conversion process, and this is why…

A general website Contact form is…

• too general, and expects the customer to have to manually choose a subject (like ‘Sales Enquiries’).
• expects the customer to type or paste the product or service specifications in to the description field manually so they can ask their questions (this information is often on a completely different page and I have seen people write down the specifications just so they can type these into the Contact Form).
• doesn’t install confidence in the customer that this enquiry is going to be received by the correct department (e.g. the Sales Department). Usually these generic forms are all sent to one person, who can take a while to distribute them to the correct person.
• often won’t clearly state to the customer what is going to happen next to their sales orientated enquiry, as most Contact Us forms have a generic ‘Thank you, we will get back to you as soon as possible’ (for example) after every submission.

Why go to the expense of creating a targeted Sales Form?

From our experience, we see a marked increase in sales enquiries in just having a targeted sales specific form, and we see that the responses to these enquiries are often a lot faster - as these are answered directly by the sales team (for example) who are eager to chase up the enquiry, not the receptionist who has enough on their plate.

Also from the customers point of view, they really feel they are doing the right thing filling in the targeted sales form, and they are often faster to fill out, as the product or service information can often be inserted automatically and we don’t necessarily need a Subject and many other fields for that matter.

At Fuel, we will often create a general Contact Us form, used for general enquiries, containing an address and map etc, phone contact details and other general contact information. If the site is an eCommerce type site, we will usually also create a separate targeted Product Enquiry form, which pulls the product information and an image of the product into the form, allowing the customer to ask a quick question on this product. Then on more service orientated websites, we will usually create a targeted Sales Enquiry form (e.g. “Get the Solution that is right for you”, “Get an expert to call you today”, or “Trial a Demo now” etc) containing only the information we require and no more, and ensuring the customer feels this is going to the right department and will be followed up by the right people.

Summary

A targeted Call-to-action form can be slightly shorter and easier for the customer to fill in as it can already contains the product/service information, and subject etc. It can also clearly specify what will happen if you fill in the Form, for example…

“Are you ready to get started? Fill in the form below and one of our Sales Reps will be in touch”

But the main point is that the customer feels secure in the fact that they know this is going to the correct team member (e.g the Sales Department) and will be followed up correctly.

Another very important aspect of creating these targeted Call-To-Action (CTA) forms is that we can track the Sales Enquiries more accurately through our inbuilt Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems. If you can measure it you can measure it!

In summary, leave the Contact forms for general contact, address information, shop hours, location etc.

Use a targeted Call-to-Action (CTA) Form, which is quick and easy to fill in, contains relevant information about why your customers are filling in the Form, and most importantly, gets sent to the correct department and ensures the customer feels secure that they will get a response from the right person.