What a good website contact form looks like

Fewer fields, plainer labels

The best contact form looks almost too simple. A name, a way to reach the person, and a box for what they need. Each label says exactly what goes in the field, in the words a visitor would use.

Labels matter for two reasons. A visitor reads them to know what to type. A screen reader reads them aloud to someone who cannot see the box. Every field on a builder page has a label for that reason.

Skip the fields that feel official but do nothing. Nobody needs a fax number, and a required company field turns away every homeowner. A form like that fits on a phone screen without scrolling, which is where many visitors will meet it.

Thirteen places the form can deliver

You choose where each submission goes. It can be a CRM, a chat channel, your phone, your inbox, or a webhook of your own. Pick the place you already look at during the day.

Connecting a CRM means pasting one credential you generate yourself. There is no sign-in screen inside the builder.

• HubSpot, Salesforce, Zoho CRM, Pipedrive and GoHighLevel, the CRMs
• Mailchimp, Kit and ActiveCampaign, the email tools
• Slack and Microsoft Teams, the chat channels
• SMS to your phone, or email to your inbox
• Any webhook, for a tool of your own

The Send test lead button

Next to the connection is a button that sends a test lead down the same path a real one would take. Press it, then look in your CRM or channel for the test.

If it arrived, the form works. If it did not, you found out on a quiet afternoon with nothing at stake, which is the right time to find out. Repeat it any time you change the credential. It is the cheapest minute in the whole setup.

Every delivery is signed, so your end can check that it came from your site. Deliveries to HubSpot, Zoho and Pipedrive update an existing contact by email instead of making a duplicate.

The Text us link beside your phone number

Some people will never fill in a form and never make a call. They will send a text. One tick adds a Text us link beside your phone number, so that person has a door too.

The number on the page should be the one you actually answer. A text that lands on a desk phone is a lead nobody sees.

The newsletter opt-in box is unticked by default

One tick adds a newsletter opt-in box to the form. On the visitor's side that box starts unticked. A person joins your list only when they tick it themselves.

That is not a limitation. A pre-ticked box is not consent in the plain sense of the word, and a list of people who chose to be there is worth more anyway.

Your privacy policy publishes as you wrote it

A form collects personal information, so your site needs a privacy policy that says what you collect and what you do with it. You write that page, or your lawyer does, and you upload it.

It publishes exactly as given. The builder does not write legal pages and does not edit yours. Nothing on this page is legal advice either; it only explains where your policy goes.

Keep the policy in step with the form. If you add the newsletter box later, the policy should say what you send. That is a short edit, and you upload the new version the same way.

What happens after a visitor presses send

The submission is delivered where you chose and appears on the Leads screen with a status and a note you can edit. When you want the list elsewhere, export every lead across every site to CSV or Excel in one click.

Then the part the form cannot do. A person wrote to you. Write back, soon, in plain words. The in-app assistant can read your leads with you, but the reply is yours.

Every page the form sits on is written from a conversation about your business. It passes a check that runs before anything publishes, validated against Google Search Essentials and modern web standards. So the page around the form is as clean as the form itself.