Key facts
- The form asked for name, phone, email, city, project type, street address, state, investment range, start date, how you heard about us, an architect or plans upload, and a message, twelve fields in all.
- It existed on one page only, the contact page, so a visitor reading a service gallery or the about page had to navigate away to ask anything.
- None of the twelve fields were marked as optional in a way a visitor would notice, and the street address and plans upload asked for information most homeowners do not have at the point of a first question.
- The company's phone number was present, which is why the finding was not fatal, but every after-hours visitor and every visitor who prefers not to call was left with the long form or nothing.
- The fix was a two-step form on every page: name and contact plus project type first, then the detail questions after the first submission, with the twelve-field version kept as the second step.
The finding
The site had one form, on the contact page, titled as a project review. It asked twelve questions. Several of them, the street address, the investment range, the start date and an upload of plans, assume the visitor is already committed and organized. Most people who land on a contractor's site are neither; they want to know whether the company does their kind of project in their town and roughly what it costs. There was no shorter way to ask, and the form was not on any page but contact.
What we looked at
We listed every form on the site and every field on each, noting which were required. We checked each service and portfolio page for any inline way to ask a question and found none. We read the form's confirmation and error behaviour on mobile, where twelve fields fill several screens. We noted the phone number's placement in the header, which gave visitors an alternative during business hours, and we checked whether the form submitted to a CRM or an inbox; it went to an inbox.
Why it mattered for leads
Each field on a first-contact form removes some of the people willing to fill it in, and fields that ask for information a visitor does not yet have remove more. A homeowner at the start of a project has a question, not a street address and a plans file. Asking for both before answering anything sends that person to the next contractor's site, where a three-field form waits. The company was paying for every visitor with its reputation and its photos, then filtering most of them out at the last step.
False positive checks we ran
We checked whether the long form was deliberate, a way to screen out small jobs; the company's own service list included smaller renovations, so it was not screening by design. We checked whether the fields were optional in the markup; several were, but the layout gave no visual cue, and the upload field looked mandatory. We checked whether a chat widget or a booking link offered a shorter path; there was none. We confirmed the form worked and was not simply broken, since a broken form is a different finding.
The fix
The proposal put a short project-review form on every page: name, phone or email, project type and town, four fields. On submission, a second step asks the detail questions, address, budget range, timing, plans, which the company still needs before a site visit, and a homeowner who stops after step one is still a lead the company can call. The full twelve fields were kept as that second step rather than thrown away. Missed-call text-back covered the visitors who called after hours.
How to check your own site for this
Count the fields on your first-contact form and ask, for each one, whether a stranger with a question could answer it without looking anything up. Anything they could not, an address, a budget, a file, belongs in a second step after you have their name and number. Then check how many pages carry the form; if the answer is one, put a short version on every page where someone might decide to ask.
Related questions
As a second step, yes. Once a visitor has given a name and a way to reach them, asking for the address, budget and timing is reasonable and saves a call. The mistake is asking for all of it before the first contact exists.
As few as you need to call the person back: a name, one way to reach them, and what the project is. Everything else can wait for step two or the first conversation.
Partly, during business hours, for people who like to call. It does nothing for the after-hours visitor or the person who prefers to type, and it gives you no record of the enquiry unless calls are tracked.
A short version, yes. People decide to ask while reading a service page or a project gallery, and sending them to the contact page to do it loses some of them on the way.
No. They became the second step, shown after the first submission, so the company still collects what it needs before a site visit and a homeowner who stops early is still a lead.
an anonymized finding from a real proposal audit; the business is described by type only; SearchPod sells the services that fix findings like this.
Want your site audited the same way?
Get a free, no-obligation proposal within one business day. We look at your site and your market and tell you plainly what we would do, and what we would not.
Get your free proposal