Building a website design that is both attractive and effective in ushering your website visitors through to conversion is a delicate balance of form and function. The latter being excruciatingly important if you want your visitors to be impressed by the former. Functional website’s components goes hand-in-hand with optimal user-experience. Visiting a website only to find broken menu links or click to call phone numbers that don’t work only serve to frustrate the user and scare them away. Ensuring all of the functional elements of your site is pivotal if you want the site’s design to have its intended effect.
One common source of functionality issues is the ubiquitous website email form. Provided so that visitors can record a bit of contact information and perhaps a question or need, it serves as a great way to connect with visitors and initiate the conversion process.
When your email form suffers from the following design flaws, however, it can make the user-experience a poor one. And that you want to avoid.
- Poorly Laid Out Fields: There are few more frustrating issues one encounters in a website email form than fields that are poorly laid out, too close to one another or spaced confusingly or in a disorganized way. Grouping your fields into sections, makes much more sense, and helps keep the user on task without adding confusion into the mix.
- Not Clearly Identifying Require Fields: Filling out an email form is a tedious task when visiting website, but people tolerate it because it’s one of the most efficient ways of getting the information you need without actually having to speak to someone directly. Adding required field tags or indicators that are too small or otherwise imperceptible only add to the frustration when the site visitor clicks submit and is directed to complete the required field that they didn’t know was actually required. Bright red asterisks are typical for these fields, so that is the most recognizable tag, but as long as you make it visually clear which fields are required and which are not, you’ll avoid driving your visitors batty with a labyrinth experience before they’re able to leave your site.
- Difficult to Read Captchas: Captchas are great for email forms because they help keep annoying spam that is rampant online down to a minimum. That does not mean, however, they can’t be a pain themselves. When your captcha frustrates the conversion process more than it does help it, it becomes a problem. Captchas that are difficult to read simply confuse and frustrate the conversion process. And that is not good for your business. Ensure your captchas are presented clearly with fonts and text that are easy to discern and get those visitors through the process so that you can start making more revenue.
- Not Confirming Submission: Many website email forms conclude the submission process by redirecting the user. Others upsell the visitor on additional content or products and services by the website owner. Confirming their submission is actually the best way to go, no matter where you take the user upon completion. A “success” message confirming their submission and even thanking them for reaching out is a great way to nurture the lead. It eliminates confusion about the status of their message, for one; and gives finality to the user process on your site. Now the ball is in the business owner(s) court to contact the lead and take the conversion process to the next level.
If you would like to work with Proctor Digital strategists to develop an effective, modern website design for your business, call us at 773.664.5819. We’d love to help!