In most areas of life, less is more.
If you have fewer fields on your website contact form, more people will fill it out.
You also have people like Blaise Pascal and Woodrow Wilson, who famously said that it takes more work to create shorter content.
This came up for me at the dentist last week when I had to fill out some paperwork to get started. Every time I go there seems to be more forms, but they’re all essentially the same thing. Between the various forms (which were all internal — the insurance stuff was already done), I had to give them my birthday three times, my address four times, and my cell phone number six times. It was madness.
I think it’s similar to the reason behind unnecessarily huge contact forms — more info is a good thing, so why not ask for it?
In the case of the dentist, it was a combination of two problems:
- They wanted more info.
- They didn’t want to take the time to consolidate the forms; it’s easier to just make another form and put it in the pile.
Lastly, it’s a problem of (lack of) consequences. If you have too many fields on the contact form on your website, fewer people will fill it out and it will literally cost you money. In the case of the dentist, though, there’s no real downside. Sure, I’ll rant about it here a bit, but they did a nice job with my teeth and I’ll likely go back.
Still, I wish they’d be willing to put in the time to make the experience a little bit better for those that decided to give them their business. Creating raving fans for your business takes work, and the little things count.
