Keeping Contact

The Mini Many-Contact Form

We all know what a call to action is (if you don’t, ask your Account Manager!), but I was surprised to see how many clients, despite having great designs, messages, content, and calls to action, lacked that one little piece to bring it all together: a Mini-Contact form on the home page of their site.

Would you send out a wedding invitation and not include the RSVP information?

You might have a contact form under the “Contact Us” page of the site, but think about this: The average visitor may never click on any page links inside your site, particularly if we’re doing our job and getting search engines to post your relevant pages on page one.

It seems that most web marketing site designers have learned their lesson and begun including a full contact form. But what about the potential clients who don't want to or can't take the time to fill out an entire contact form?

Some reasons a visitor may not fill out a full contact form:

- It takes "too much time."
- It asks for information the visitor may not want to give.
- The visitor just wants more information, but may not have a specific question.
- The visitor may have a specific question and wants it answered quickly, instead of taking the time to fill out all the information in a full form.
- The visitor never clicks on the link to the full contact form.
- The visitor isn’t internet-savvy and doesn’t realize they can look for a form deeper in your site through which to contact you.
- The visitor is browsing your site at work and doesn’t want to be too obvious about filling out online forms. (Hey, it’s possible!)

Reasons to have a Mini-Contact form:

- It provides your visitors with a way to contact you—on your home page, and every page.
- It only takes a moment to fill in 3-4 fields (boxes).
- It may be what your visitor is looking for to begin with—how convenient to have it on the first page!
- Mini-Contact forms can appear much less intimidating and invasive than full contact forms to a visitor who wants to reveal as little information as possible about him or herself.
- Every lead is a potential client.

Does it seem like a waste to have two separate contact forms on a site? Believe me, as a minimalist, I have thought about this! But the real question is: If a potential client is looking at both your site and your competitor’s homepages and your competitor has a contact form on their homepage, but you don’t, who will get the client?