This post is about the often overlooked contact form. A point of conversion for attracting new clients, and it continues to astonish us how difficult they can be to use.

To be clear, our conversion preference every time is a phone call. The individual is on the line and you’re getting a chance to know them, and hopefully your DocuSign account is up and ready to send the retainer. Yesss, you are a champion!

However, if someone is not so inclined to talk (it’s late or they could be at work), and they are not interested in the chat feature, the trusty contact form is there 24/7 ready to consume the user’s information and promptly delivery to your inbox.

Birth of a Contact Form

For the purpose of demonstration we selected a few contact forms of law firms appearing on Google for the search query “Pradaxa Lawsuit.” The forms below are from pages that have been built specifically for a Pradaxa page.

Below, the web developer created a few standard fields including First Name, Last Name, Phone Number, and maybe an email address, and a “Send” or submit button. Done and done, right?

Yes, it’s remarkably half-effort.

You ever have a sales person from Nordstrom come up to you and the first thing he says is “What’s your full name?”

Of course not, and you would likely walk away. A contact form field can be a lot like that – pressuring if you decide to build it without consideration. Remember, your requesting details which include medical information, you’re not making reservations for dinner.

So most forms look like this one, which isn’t bad. The first field is “First Name” seems logical, but remember the potential pressuring part. The form itself is short and the fields are well balanced. It has the widely used value propositions such as “Free” and “No obligation,” which I can barely read the slim white text on dark contrast.  For older users this would likely be unreadable. Remember we are searching Pradaxa so a lot of spouses and next of kin users are over the age of 50, the target audience. This form is going to be difficult.

The Details of Your Case field is small. When entering information if you press “enter” it immediately sends. Not a favorite but barely any effort, and it can certainly be improved.

The “Intake” Form

Here is a form that looks very thorough. It has “Name*First” (which kinda looks bad), plus an Address field and a bonus Address Line 2 – as if you’re filing a super fun change of address at the DMV!

As you scroll down to view the form you’ll probably notice there are a lot of fields. Ugh, this looks a bit intimidating.

Filing it out anyways…You get to select your country, but you have to scroll through a lot of countries, such as Albania, Central African Republic, Qatar and other Multi-District Litigation hotbeds. So if you’re on a mobile phone or tablet, you’re probably frowning at your phone trying to get to United States. You might even stop and back out, which is known as “form abandonment.”

Note the third question from the bottom: “While taking Pradaxa did you or a loved one suffer any of the following” and there are just circles with no descriptions. I could go on but to save time let’s just call this one a miserable fail.

This Form Generates More Cases

Ok, so two examples, one was not so bad while the other was terrible, and let’s move on to what is effective and improves your contact form conversion rate.

If there is one element to take away from this post it’s the “radio buttons” and a simple question to begin the form process. In this case: Were you or a loved one prescribed Pradaxa? Answers are Yes or No.

Stupid simple, non-intrusive, and if the “yes” button is selected the form will slowly expand revealing additional questions related to injuries, all of which also use checkboxes and drop down menus that are easy to use on all devices because your fingers never need to touch the keyboard.

Ok, the user has answered 3 or 4 questions, so they have committed to the form and it’s time to get the Name and Phone number part – the most important part! The field label name is above the field so it doesn’t clutter, and it contrasts well.

Since we’re total nerds about this, our fields boxes are not too large so to save space for more important information, and the first name and last name fields have 15 characters visible. If your name happens to be Arnold Schwarzenegger, we got you, and if longer they will extend.

Question: Where is the address field?
We learned through screen recording that address fields were often stopping points and if required led to form abandonment. The number wasn’t tremendous, but why lose a Pradaxa case and thousands in fees when the firm’s intake will confirm it over the phone anyways?  For our purposes of targeting we include the zip code.

As you can see the last two fields have the key element, the phone number. Not last, but certainly we’re closer to the Send Message button and the user can see they are nearly done!

The Contact Method is Never Done

We’re not saying our form is perfect, in fact we are constantly experimenting with colors and wording and learning what has changed and will continue to change. We’ve come to find certain demographics respond better to particular colors than others, especially in older users. We’ve tested the text within the “Send’ buttons to use “Send Message” and “Start Your Free Case Evaluation,” and, again, some work better than others.

If you’re wondering what to do next, go check out your site or landing pages. Be sure you can’t select a country like Abu Dhabi, and try a test or two for a couple months.

Got some thoughts or have a tip that can help everyone, let us know in the comments – thank you!

Landon