What is a Contact Form? How it Works & Why it is Important?

Last Updated on March 5, 2023 by Roshan Parihar

In this post, you will learn what is a contact form, how it works, and its importance of it in an online business. If you want to allow customers to send emails to you directly from your website, you can add contact forms to your website.

You can allow users to send text messages to you to understand the requirements of your users. You can also add uploads fields to get screenshots to get picture views of requirements.

If you want to grow your business online, you should consider using contact forms on your websites.

So, let’s start to learn about contact forms and their importance in businesses.

What is a Contact Form?

A contact form is an online web form to collect users’ input data with contact information. It captures the users entered data and send emails to the website owner or store data in the database on submission.

The contact form can contain fields like Name, Email, and Message. If you want to collect uploads with the contact form, you can add upload fields to your contact forms on your website.

How Does a Contact Form Work?

Before you start creating your contact form, you should also know it’s working.

So, let’s find out the steps to understand the working of a contact form.

Step 1: The user fills out the contact form with their name, email address, and message. After that, they click the submit button.

Step 2: It starts the validation process of user input data. If the data is not accurate, the submission is failed and the user will get the validation message to give the correct data.

Step 3: Once the user provides valid data, the user is allowed to submit the form. The user will get a success message on submit of the contact form.

Step 4: The form data send to the server to process and send emails. The owner of the website will receive the email message in their email inbox.

The validation displays the error messages in red color when the user input data is not valid on click of submit button. When all the entered data are according to the validation, the user is allowed to submit the form.

In addition to sending emails, you can also store form data in the database. To store the records in the database on form submission, you can use PHP with MySQL on submission. WordPress users can use the WPForms plugins to store the data in the database without the need for coding.

Why a Contact Form is Important for Online Business Websites?

Contact forms are an important part of any website running an online business. You can allow users to contact you using online contact forms. There are many benefits of contact forms given below:-

1. Get Inquiries from Users:
   If you are running a business online, you can get queries from your audience using the contact form on your website.
2. Generate More Leads: Users who fill out contact forms can also become subscribers to your business. You can collect unlimited leads from the contact form on your website.
3. Build Email List: You can build your email list from contact forms. After that, you can promote your products using emails and convert them into regular customers.
4. Know Your Audience Better: To know your customers, you need to know their names, email, and requirements of them. Adding these fields to your contact forms can help you understand why they came and what product they like to buy.
5. Help Users Contact You: Contact forms on your website can help your audience reach you through emails. After getting emails from your audience, you can perform one-to-one communication with them.
6. Provide Support to Your Audience: If you want to give support to your audience, it also requires you to add a contact form to your website. Every time your audience needs support, they fill out the contact form to reach you.

Best Practices in Contact Forms

Now, you know what a contact form is on an online business website. Let’s find out some of the best practices you can’t ignore in it:-

• Limit Form Length to Get More Conversions:
  Make your forms shorter in length to make it easier for users to fill with fewer requirements of text content. Longer-size forms make it complex for users to fill. So, always use short-length forms
• Explain Each Field: To make it easier for users to understand forms easily, you should consider adding hints and explanations to your forms.
• Experiment with Different Form Types: Add direct forms, popups, animations, and many more ways of adding forms to your website. Find out which one gives you more conversion and helps users fill out the form easily.
• Tell Next Step After Filling and Submitting Form: When your users fill out the form give them messages that your emails have been sent. You can also add text that you will give a reply to within 24-48 hours. This makes sure to your users that you will definitely take care of their messages and contact them shortly.
• Add Validation To Get Valid Entries: Validation can help you get valid entries from users. You can display errors when users fill wrong entries. Also, give a success message when users fill correct entries on form submission.
• Check Your Emails If Working on Form Submission: Make sure that you will get emails when someone fills in the forms on your website. Without checking your forms, you cannot guarantees that you will get your user’s queries to your email inbox.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQS)

Here are a few questions that people ask:-

1. Is It Necessary for a Website?

Answer: Yes, a contact form is necessary for a website to allow your users to contact you for some purpose. It can help you know your customers wants to reach you to get help from you or start communication with you. You can grow your business online with a contact form on your website. So, it is necessary to use it on a website.

2. What are the Uses of a Contact Form on a Website?

Answer: Here are some uses of a contact form on a website:-

• Collect information from your audience.
• Lead generation for your business.
• Connect with your audience.
• Grow your business online.
• Allow your customers to get support when required.

3. What Should be in a Contact Form?

Answer: Here is the list of contact form fields you should add:-

1. First Name and Last Name
2. Email Address
3. Phone Number
4. Company Name
5. Message or Reason

You May Also Like to Read

• Different Types of Online Forms for Business (with How to Build Them)
• How to Build Contact Form Beginners Guide
• How to Setup Gmail SMTP in WordPress