Your inquiry form: eleven places where leads get lost

The inquiry form is the most important part of a website, and it’s the last thing anyone thinks about. The home page design gets debated for weeks, while the form is added at the end: name, phone, button. Then the ads start bringing in visitors, and there are fewer leads than expected.

Leads aren’t lost only because people didn’t like the offer. Often the person was ready to leave their details, but something got in the way. Or they sent the inquiry and it never reached a manager. Here are eleven places where that happens most often.

Before the visitor starts filling it in

1. The form is hard to find. It’s only at the very bottom of the page, or it opens from a button that isn’t visible on a phone. A visitor who has decided to get in touch shouldn’t have to hunt for it: there should be a way to get in touch from anywhere on the page.

2. It’s unclear what happens after you submit. “Leave a request”… and then what? A call in a few minutes, a shortlist by email, an invitation to the sales office? When the outcome isn’t spelled out, people put off the decision. One line under the button removes the question.

3. The form asks for too much at once. Name, phone, email, budget, purchase timeline, payment method, comments. For a first contact, a name and a phone number are usually enough; the manager will clarify the rest in conversation. Every extra field is a reason to close the window.

While the visitor is filling it in

4. Awkward phone number input. The mask won’t accept a pasted number, insists on one particular format, or breaks when someone types the country code. On top of that, the phone opens a letter keyboard instead of a number pad. A small thing that makes people abandon the form.

5. Errors show up late and make no sense. The person clicks “Submit,” the form turns red, and it’s unclear what’s wrong. The hint should appear next to the field and speak plainly: “One digit is missing,” not “Invalid format.”

6. The window closes by accident. A tap outside the pop-up or a “back” swipe on a phone closes the form along with everything already typed. Not everyone is willing to start over. Keep what’s been entered, and stop the form from closing on a stray tap.

7. An “I’m not a robot” check that’s hard to pass. Spam protection is necessary, but picking images on a small screen weeds out real people too. There are ways to block spam that visitors never even notice.

After the button is pressed

8. No clear confirmation. The button was pressed and nothing changed. The person presses it again and sends a duplicate, or decides the site is broken. After submission, make it clear: the inquiry was received, and here’s what happens next.

9. The inquiry goes to an inbox nobody reads. The address was set up at launch, the employee has since left, and the emails pile up. Or they land in spam. This is one of the most common losses, and one of the most painful.

10. The inquiry doesn’t reach the CRM, or arrives without a source. The manager sees a phone number but doesn’t know which page or which ad the person came from, or which floor plan they were interested in. The call ends up cold, and the marketer can’t tell which ads are working.

11. The form broke and nobody noticed. After a site update, a switch of email provider or a change in CRM settings, submission stopped working. The site opens, the button clicks, but no inquiries arrive. Someone finds out a week later when they ask why things have gone so quiet.

How to check

You can find most of these problems in half an hour: go through the form yourself on a phone, send a test inquiry from every page, and follow where it lands and what the manager sees in it.

The last item can only be covered by regular checks, automated or at least manual once a week, and always after any change to the site or the CRM.

An inquiry the visitor sent and the manager never got costs more than a visitor who never showed up.

If you suspect leads are getting lost somewhere along the way, we can trace the whole path from the button to the CRM together and find the leak. It usually turns up faster than you’d think.