Your website’s Contact Form is your virtual sales rep whom your online visitor has welcomed to make a presentation by simply hitting the “submit” button. Your new contact has expressed their interest in your products or services and is inviting you to tell them more. Be careful not to be too aggressive with your sales message, make a concerted effort to build a lasting relationship, and deepen their loyalty once this contact moves from being a potential prospect into a continued buyer.

Follow these helpful tips to make your Contact Form a design and marketing success.

Make your form short and precise
Collect as little and relevant information as possible (Name, Phone, Email). You might add one additional “drop-menu” selection listing the most popular reasons why the visitor might be submitting the form (more info, sales question, request newsletter, support issue, etc.). Don’t overwhelm them with choices though (3 to 8 options is plenty). You want to form a trusting relationship right from the start. If a form looks too long or too time-consuming, visitors won’t bother signing up.

Check the forms functionality
Test your forms regularly and in different browsers. Ensure that when the visitor hits the “submit” button that your form actually submits and doesn’t return any error messages. Make sure that your form is received properly in the format you intended and in a way that you can utilize the data. Validate your CSS and HTML with a validation tool available via the web (google: form validation tools).

Make the most of Redirects
Once the visitor hits “submit”, redirect them to a special “thank you” page so they know that their information was submitted successfully. Also utilize this “thank you” page to provide the visitor with more information on your intentions with this new relationship and even provide a special promotion or coupon to express your appreciation that they trusted you with their personal information. Don’t forget to integrate this “thank you” page into your website’s navigation scheme so they can continue their browsing experience (don’t give it it’s own navigation menu entry, but make sure the regular navigation menu is visible for the rest of your site).

Utilize this personal data
Set-up an auto-responder with a personalized greeting (using the visitor’s name) welcoming them and confirming their information. You can also have them click a confirmation link (double opt-in) to avoid any Spam complaints. Using auto-responder software (such as Aweber or GetResponse) you can maintian an automatic relationship with this new contact set to your preferred and timely intervals. If you use the “drop-menu” suggestion above, you can automatically assign the contact to a specifically targeted email list within your auto-responder software.

Use this data intelligently
Using web-analytics tools can provide you with even more information such as how often they visited your website (based on I.P. address), which page they viewed the most, which links they clicked on, (etc.). With the analytics tools built into Aweber and GetResponse, you can determine which emails are performing better and which links are being clicked on. If used properly, web-analytics will help you to target your messages to your new contacts more effectively.

Visit these links for more information on auto-responders and how they can help your marketing efforts:
Aweber
GetResponse