Create a Strong Contact Page to Increase Conversions

Getting lots of site traffic but not enough inquiries?
Wondering if there’s something wrong with your contact page?
Want real, practical tips on how to improve your contact form and page?
Ready to take notes and implement changes asap?

Great, you’re in the right place! In this article we’ll challenge you to analyze your current contact page – from a design, functionality and user experience perspective. Then, we’ll provide you with a list of steps to take to transform your average performing contact page into a highly converting one. 

Note: As a responsible business owner, we assume that you’re using Google Analytics and actually tracking your site’s performance. If not, we highly urge you to start doing so. You’ll be able to compare the results you have at the moment, with the stats you’ll get once you implement the steps described below and enhance your contact page.

Why your contact page is important?

After your Home, About and Portfolio pages, your Contact is one of the most visited pages on your website. Does it look good? Does it work well? It is mobile friendly? Does it provide all the necessary details for a client to get motivated to contact you?

You might be working your butt off, finding new ways to send more people to your website, yet if it doesn’t do it’s basic job of promoting your work and triggering users to reach out to you – all your efforts are in vain. It’s ironic how the design of a Contact page is usually last on most people’s To Do list. In 90% of the cases, it gets a boring form and a “Get in Touch” title above it. Sure, we, as a website template provider can get away with it on our theme demos. But you, the talented creative who wants to stand out and express your personality through each image, video and page layout – you’re not allowed to do that. Unless of course you’re getting 50 inquiries per day and need to filter out some of the leads. 

Solution: The easiest way to approach this is to have a paragraph or two on your Contact page that explain why your potential client should contact you. You can describe a need or desire that they have and how you can help them solve it. You can get creative, use jokes, GIFs, or funny photos from your media library. What ever it is – it has to motivate your site visitor to take that extra step and fill out the form.

How to create a highly converting contact page

Step 1: Keep it visible

Well first of all, your Contact page should be easy to find AT ALL TIMES. Don’t get too creative, call it as it is “Contact” “Book Me” “Book a Date”. People love clarity and simplicity, hence they’ll be searching for it inside your menu. Don’t hide it in drop downs or under pages called Experience. Put it out there. If you like to have buttons inside your header, put it inside a button to emphasize it even more. 

Step 2: Less is more

Have you ever found yourself in front of a painfully long [survey] form, thinking “Oh man, this is going to take forever”, then ending up just postponing or ignoring the form all together, because its length is too overwhelming? Yup, the same applies to your site visitors. You don’t want to scare potential clients away by having too many fields in your contact form.
Your main objective with this contact form is to collect just enough information to get the conversation started. You can always follow up with more questions after that first touch point is established.

Solution: Review all the questions you currently ask via your contact form. Are you sure details like “parents’ names” “favorite book or quote” are an absolute must at this stage? Surely you can get rid of a few fields. Yet, if all the questions you ask are an absolute must for you, use conditional logic to make your form look shorter and less scary. Have certain fields appear based on what your lead answers in the previous questions. Our FloForms plugin allows you to do that in its free version. 

Note: Some photographers, after reaching a certain level of maturity within the industry (price and experience wise) prefer to include more specific questions in their form, to filter out clients they don’t want to work with. Those only beginning their journey, or currently struggling to get more clients – should keep their forms as simple and user-friendly as possible. 3-4 questions is an optimal length for your contact form.   

Step 3: Create trust

Let’s say submitting a form is too much of a commitment in the perception of your lead. Perhaps they are worried that their submissions will get lost, or they don’t have all the details you ask in those “gray boxes” (your contact form). Maybe they’re old fashioned and prefer to hop on a quick call with you, hear your voice and get a first impression about your personality. 

It’s always good to include some additional contact information on your page, next to the form. An email, a phone number, perhaps even your office address. This helps create trust, because users know that they can always reach out to you in case of an emergency. Besides, adding a physical location to your contact page helps with Local SEO, while the phone number or email show that you’re approachable. 

Also, if you’re afraid to miss out on an inquiry because of a form/server malfunction – those additional contact details will save the day. 

Note: Some contact form builders, such as FloForms, allow you to set email reminders and send yourself notifications (via slack, sms) to ensure that you never miss an inquiry and always reply to client emails in a timely manner. 

Step 4: Confirmation message

Most contact form builders and plugins offer some kind of confirmation message options. It can be a pop-up, a page redirect or email auto response. Each of these has the purpose to inform the user that their message has been submitted successfully. So they’re not left wondering “did it work, did it not?”

Get creative with these, if it’s a redirect to a Thank You page or an email confirmation – make it friendly and welcoming. Thank the user for inquiring you. Inform them how soon they’ll get a reply. Offer them some links to check out while they wait – your favorite galleries or blog posts, a fun interview or podcast that you participated in, even a client guide with useful tips for the type of services they inquired. It’s always good to offer some extra value before the conversation even started. 

Step 5: FAQs

No matter if you’ve worked in the industry for 1 year or 10, you’ve probably noticed that there’s a list of questions you keep getting from clients again and again. Why waste time (yours and the clients) to answer them via emails? Create a quick FAQ section, place it below your contact form and have all those burning questions answered there. This does not only save you time, but also ensures that you’re getting inquiries from more qualified leads  – they’ve read how you work, what your packages include, what’s your style, how fast do you deliver galleries, etc, and they’re still interested. Yay! 

An FAQ section also allows you to show some of your expertise, share tips and recommendations. This can make your user feel taken care of, before they even sign any contracts.  

Step 5: How’s your voice?

If you have a fun, witty, upbeat voice all across your site pages, keep that tone inside your contact form too. If your forms builder allows (and it should) warm up those standard “name, date, event location” fields into something more original and exciting, such as: “What’s your and your partner’s name? Where’s your big event happening? Tell me all about your dream wedding? What are you most excited about in regards to working with me?” etc. The more friendly you make it, the more natural and inviting the process of filling out the form seems. 

Step 6: Offer alternatives

Sometimes people who end up on your website aren’t “shopping” yet, hence there’s no point for them to contact you. However, if they landed on your website, they probably like your work, or got interested in an article you recently posted with tips on locations, outfits or planning. In any case, why not offer them some alternative ways to connect with you and keep that curiosity flame burning. Add your social media links to your contact page, or a newsletter sign up block. Maybe you have a freebie (lead magnet) available for those who subscribe, or you promise to send them weekly fun and useful content. No matter how you chose to do it, get that foot in the door.  

Step 7: Mobile experience

You’d think its hilarious even mentioning this step, it’s 2020 outside, hello! Yet, there’s more to it than having a responsive website design. You have to make sure that your site visitors actually enjoy browsing through your site on mobile – meaning, it loads fast and smooth, everything works, it’s all easy to read and click through. 

Go ahead, ask a few friends with different mobile devices (iPhones, Androids, iPads, other tablets) to access your website, go through your pages, including your Contact page, and fill out the form. This will offer you the peace of mind that everything looks and works smoothly, plus you’re double-checking whether your form works properly. Win win.

Bonus Step: Regular check-ups

Servers can be down, plugin conflicts happen, emails get flagged as spam for no particular reason. There are tons of factors that can influence the way your contact form works, therefore, no harm in scheduling regular check ups to make sure everything works. 

If you use a plugin such as FloForms, we’re about to release its Pro version, that includes Slack and SMS notifications, along with the email reminders that were already available with the Free version. Set those up to never worry about missing an inquiry again. 

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Want to learn more about building a great website and growing your photography business? Check out this articles on 14 Website Mistakes that Photographers Make + Recommended Solutions and this one we wrote for the Photobug Blog on 5 Things Every Photographer Should Do When Building Their Website. 

If you’re curious to learn more about FloForms Pro, join our Facebook Community here, as we’ll be sharing launch news and special deals inside our group first. 

Flothemes Team,
Empowering You.