Recently, we chatted about “calls-to-action“… getting your visitors to “do something” on while on your site. One of your calls may be to subscribe to a newsletter, to join a mailing list, to enter to win a free product, or to request a demo or “more information”. In any of these cases, you probably have a contact page that asks the visitor to submit their name and email address so you may send them what they requested. But why stop there? Your contact forms can do so much more to help you find out about the people and businesses that stumble across your website. Just like they are requesting more information from you, you should be getting more information from them.
Go beyond the standard fields of name, company, email address, and “additional comments.” Here are a few ideas to amp up your “contact us” forms…
Additional Demographics – Along with the standard fields listed above, consider asking the number of employees to get an idea of the size of the business requesting information. Also ask the position within the company the requester holds to understand who may be making the decision to do business with you.
How Did They Find You? – A great bit of information to gather is how they found you in the first place. Were they referred by a friend or current/former customer? Browsing the web? An industry partner site? This is an important indicator of what or who is driving traffic to you and can be valuable to your future marketing efforts.
What Do You Want To Know? – A common ending to a form is a big blank space for the visitor to write any additional comments or questions. More often than not, this field is left blank. Why? It is possible, the visitor may not know at that moment what they really want. So why not help them by asking a question that your company’s products or services can answer. For example, our friends at Hubspot have the question “What is your biggest marketing challenge?” at the end of their request forms.
Get the picture? The more you know about your visitors the easier it will be to convert them to customers.
