Is My Contact Form Going To Defer Potential Clients?

#discuss #freelance #webdev #critique

So I recently redid my portfolio, and one thing I did was setup a "Start a Project" form that asks some questions to give me a better idea about the person/company and their project ideas/budget. A thread I stumbled across was asking about "Contact form vs Email" on portfolio's and a large majority of the responses were for Email.

Is my contact form going to deter potential clients, or is it a good filter to weed out the ones that don't want to value my time?

Check it out »

I'd love any feedback you have or suggestions to make the funnel more efficient.

Top comments (8)

Jarod Smith • Sep 12 '18 • Edited

I think you might be deterring clients ,try to reduce the number of prompts on your form. I understand you're trying to save time and weed out people who aren't serious out, but your form and wording could also come across as, "my time is important, so give me all the details about your project first so I can determine if it is worth it to talk to you."

Jack Harner 🚀 • Sep 12 '18

I definitely want the form to feel more like "Yes, I'd love to work with you". Simpler seems to be the consensus, so I'm thinking just Name/Email/Project Details/Budget (adding a "not sure" option).

Jarod Smith • Sep 12 '18

That sounds much better

Joe Strouth • Sep 12 '18 • Edited

Some suggestions:

uniform width on all the inputs
multiline prompts should either expand the height of the input or be placed above as a label
center aligned text creates rough margins on both sides and decreases readability, consider left align

Jack Harner 🚀 • Sep 12 '18

Now that I'm looking at it, I definitely need to fix a lot of the mobile styling. Thank you for the input!

Jasper Stephenson • Sep 12 '18

Any barriers you introduce in between the user and value of your service (even if that value is just a consultation with a human) will necessarily cut down on conversion. The question really is: is the cost of losing (optimistically) a third of your new leads worth as much to you as (potentially) weeding out clients who aren't serious?

Also, are you considering all use cases? What about a client that's totally serious, but hasn't picked a timeline for their project yet? They will hesitate at that date picker, and possibly fall off right there. Unless you're currently spending tons of your time filtering out non-serious clients, I think simpler for the user is the way to go.

Jack Harner 🚀 • Sep 12 '18

So I'm thinking of thinning the form down to Name / Email / Tell me about your project / budget (adding a 'not sure' option). Better to get people I don't want filling out the form, than nobody filling out the form at all, I think.