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 Post subject: Is a contact form a "must have" or a bad idea?
PostPosted: August 24th, 2016, 6:37 
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Joined: July 7th, 2014, 6:44
Posts: 192
Location: Switzerland
Hi,

My web site has a contact form.

Until now, my opinion was that it was a rather useful thing for several reasons:
- this let people contact you when you're offline
- this can help shy people contacting you if they feel uncomfortable to call.

I used a relatively simple contact form which doesn't ask the phone number, as I wanted possible customers not feeling tracked by their phone number.
The only fields are:
- name
- email
- subject
- text
- captcha code

Most people call me directly.
However, some people contact me through the form. In such a case, the question is in general rather vague, like
Quote:
My drive is no more detected. Can you do something?
or
Quote:
I cannot access my hard drive. Can I come and see you?

About half of customers do not write their full name, and only one third leave their phone number.
So, in most cases, I suggests the customer calling me to fix an appointment, I remind my phone number, and offer to call back if the client send me his phone number.

Only about half of customers call me back or answer to my email.
The conversion rate is much lower than when people call directly.

I wonder if my email arrived in the trash folder (as my website is on a shared hosting and some Internet service providers blacklist by IP address) or what else happened.
Of course, without the customer phone number, it's impossible to know why he did not contact me again, if he simply not received my answer, went meanwhile to a competitor, a.s.o.

So, I wonder if should I not simply remove the contact form to push in the direction of people calling me, with the risk that some customers contact competitors whose web site has a contact form.

Do you also observe a high rate of "ghost prospects" who contact you by email and never call?
Should my contact form ask a phone number or better let it so?
Has anyone tried removing the contact form from his website?

Thank you for sharing your experiences.


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 Post subject: Re: Is a contact form a "must have" or a bad idea?
PostPosted: August 24th, 2016, 18:24 
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Joined: October 16th, 2013, 13:21
Posts: 713
Location: Brazil
If the amount of spam messages received is not that much, and also the job-related messages are not that many, my opinion is you should just answer them the way you stated, informing your phones for contact or asking for the customer phones so that you can call them.

But, like, do not mind the flow of the messages too much. Answer them correctly, and if the customer answer backs, good. If not, just forget the matter.

As you say, the conversion rate is lower, but those people that will not make a phone call first thing will probably not make that call even if you donĀ“t have a contact form in your website. Think of it as getting some more customers in addition to those that call you directly.


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 Post subject: Re: Is a contact form a "must have" or a bad idea?
PostPosted: August 26th, 2016, 11:03 
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Joined: July 7th, 2014, 6:44
Posts: 192
Location: Switzerland
Thank you.


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