The Inquiry Path on Your Website: Contact Form, Callback, Booking

Why do so many inquiries get lost in the last few steps?

In the worked example from the article A website that generates inquiries, 120 of 2,000 visitors open the contact page, 60 start the form and 24 submit it. So in the last few steps, half of those who already started are lost, and before that half of those who reached the contact page. These visitors wanted something. The path did not let them through.

The question this article sets out to answer: Which inquiry path suits which visitor, and how do you design the form, callback and appointment booking so that as few people as possible drop out in the last step? To answer it, we first clarify the terms and a principle from social psychology. Then we weigh two views on form length and compare the three paths. At the end comes what has to happen after submitting.

Every field in the form is a question the visitor has to answer before being allowed to talk to you.

Terms and thinking model: friction and the foot in the door

The inquiry path covers everything between a visitor’s decision to get in touch and the business’s reply: the choice of contact channels, the form or booking, the confirmation and the first response. Friction is everything on this path that creates effort or uncertainty: a required field, an unclear error message, the question of what happens to the data, or the uncertainty of whether anyone will reply at all.

A principle described by Jonathan Freedman and Scott Fraser in 1966 helps with design: the foot-in-the-door technique. In their experiments, people agreed to a larger request more readily if they had first agreed to a small one. The usual explanation: whoever has said yes once sees themselves as someone who takes part and continues to act consistently.

Souchet, Mayeur, Courbet and colleagues (2023) tested a digital form of this. In an experiment with 3,356 internet users who came via a Google search or a Facebook ad to the page of a provider of online training, those who had previously given several small active agreements, for example through simple clicks, were more likely to sign up. The result held for both visitor sources.

Short or multi-step: two views on the form

The first view says: as short as possible. It rests on a simple observation: every detail is effort, and visitors are reluctant to give away personal data. In two web experiments with 535 and 27,900 visitors, Dvir and Gafni (2018) found that a shorter landing page with an identical form led to an inquiry considerably more often than a long one. Less content meant more willingness to provide one’s own data. The article Building a landing page describes the study in detail. This leads to the rule found in several articles on this website: five fields at most, with as few required fields as possible.

The second view says: sales needs information to recognize good inquiries quickly, and a multi-step form can collect it without deterring people. It rests on the principle of small commitments. The first stage only asks what it is about, with a few selection buttons. Name and contact channel come only after that.

The two views can be combined, and I consider the combination the better route. The number of required details stays small, five fields at most. The order begins with the request, not with personal data. Additional pre-qualification details are optional or appear on the confirmation page after submitting. One qualification applies: the experiment by Souchet and colleagues concerned signing up for training, not B2B inquiries, and the study by Dvir and Gafni measured page length, not the number of fields.

Form, callback, booking: which path fits when?

Not every visitor wants the same thing. Someone with a short question wants to write. Someone with an urgent problem wants to talk. Someone who already knows they want a conversation wants an appointment. Anders, Coleman and Castleberry (2020) found among 160 surveyed buyers in the United States that they preferred email for exchanging information, but the phone for getting acquainted and for difficult questions. Applied to the website, this means the path should match the kind of request.

For most small businesses, one main path and one secondary path are enough. The main path is the one that fits the usual next step in the sale, for services that need explaining often appointment booking or the form. The secondary path is the visible phone number. More than two equal paths confuse rather than help. Whether a chatbot or live chat adds anything is compared in the article Chatbot, callback form or live chat.

How do you design a form that gets filled in?

The following list summarizes what follows from the principle of small commitments and the five-field rule. Go through it with your own form on a smartphone.

• The first question concerns the request and can be answered with one click.
• Five fields at most, of which only name, one contact channel and the request are required.
• Fields have labels, not just gray placeholder text that disappears while typing.
• Error messages say what to do and sit directly next to the field.
• On smartphones, the number pad opens for phone numbers.
• The button names what happens, for example “Request a reply”.
• A short note explains what the data is used for, with a link to the privacy policy.
• Spam protection does not require the visitor to solve a puzzle if it can be avoided.

A note on data protection, without any claim to be legal advice: under European rules, processing an inquiry the visitor makes themselves usually does not require separate consent, but it does require understandable information about what happens to the data. Anyone who also wants to use the data for a newsletter needs separate consent for that. The details are described in the article Data protection in sales. Have your form checked by your data protection officer.

Setting up callback and appointment booking properly

Callback and appointment booking have fewer fields than a form, but their own pitfalls. With both, the risk lies not on the website but in the business behind it.

1. Offer time slots

   With a callback request, the visitor chooses a time slot, such as morning or afternoon. This increases the chance that the callback reaches someone.

2. State the length and content of the appointment

   With appointment booking, the page says in advance how long the conversation is, whether it takes place by phone or video and what happens afterwards.

3. Ask one pre-qualification question

   A single question when booking, such as the request or company size, helps with preparation and costs hardly any bookings.

4. Keep the calendar honest

   Only release times that will actually be kept. A canceled first appointment looks worse than a later one.

5. Send confirmation and reminder

   A confirmation immediately, a reminder the day before. Both with the option to reschedule.

How the subsequent conversation should be structured so that the booking leads to a next step is described in the article The first sales conversation.

What has to happen after submitting

For the visitor, the inquiry path does not end with the click but with the first reply. Oldroyd, McElheran and Elkington (2011) report in Harvard Business Review on a study according to which U.S. companies took an average of 42 hours to respond to an online inquiry, and 24 percent did not reply within 24 hours. The article Lead handover from marketing to sales puts these numbers in context and recommends a deadline the team keeps on every normal working day.

For the website, this leads to a promise on the confirmation page: who will get in touch, by when and through which channel. This promise is only as good as the organization behind it. Every inquiry needs a recipient with a deputy, a deadline and a list in which it lands with source and date. A confirmation page is also the right place for the optional additional questions, because whoever has already submitted can no longer drop out.

How do you measure whether the inquiry path is improving?

The inquiry path is measured at the two drop-off points from the worked example: from the contact page to the started form, and from the started to the submitted form. Many analytics tools show the start of a form as an event if it has been set up. Add the response time, which only your own inquiry list shows.

How to calculate and improve the overall inquiry rate is described in the article Measuring the website inquiry rate.

Conclusion and what you can do this week

The opening question was
inquiry path suits which visitor and how it must be designed. The answer: one main path that fits the usual next step in the sale, and the phone number as a secondary path. The form starts with the request, stays at five fields at most and says after submitting who will get back by when. Callback and booking need time slots and an honestly kept calendar. In the end, the effect depends not on the website but on the deadline kept behind it.

• Fill in your own form on a smartphone and note every hurdle.
• Reduce required fields to name, one contact channel and the request.
• Put a first question about the request with selection buttons at the beginning.
• Make the button text concrete.
• State on the confirmation page who will get back by when.
• Set recipient, deputy and deadline for inquiries.
• Set up the start of the form as an event in analytics.

A form is not an administrative act but the beginning of a conversation. It should feel like one.