Why Your Small Business Should Despise Contact Forms

Some bloggers go to extreme lengths to hide their contact information. Are you a small business? Then avoid contact forms at all costs.

What’s Good About Contact Forms

Okay, so I won’t entirely bash on contact forms. Contact forms are great for:

• Accumulating lots of information about your customers
• Adding an extra layer of protection against spammers finding your email

The question becomes, how willing are your customers to give you all of this information? Are you losing potential customers by asking too much? By adding an extra layer of protection against spammers, are you also blocking potential customers?

Do Your Want Your Customers To Feel Like This?

The Ugly Truth About Contact Form

When you send an email, do you want to send it to an anyonomous person? That’s how customers see your contact form, an anonymous person is receiving their message.

Do you want to to read email from an anyonmyous person? What if your contact form sends the message to a person in your office who doesn’t really understand the message or offer. You could be losing out on substantial business by not allowing the customer to send the message to a specific department.

Scenario: I have to dig like a dog to find a specific person to contact. If I find it at all, I’m already bothered that I had to search that hard. Odds are, if I’m an average consumer, I’ll give up and your business will lose out on a customer.

The Basic Ugly Truths:

• If I’m hunting for your email, then I’m looking to establish a relationship. Why make it harder to find a point of contact?
• The longer I have to hunt for your information, the less likely I am to contact you. You lose out on potential business?
• The really bad guys that want to find your information, will find it anyway.
• The really good guys who want to find your information, won’t find it at all.

How To Make Your Ugly Duckling Into A Darling Form