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I am working on simple web app site and we have "Contact sales" screen, where we have only a phone number and a small form (~5 fields). Does it make sense to use a popup for that screen instead of a separate page?

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You should use a page, not a popup(be it a modal or a new browser window).

Using a page makes the contact information more scaleable, you can add more to it later without having to worry about redoing the layout.

Another benefit using a page is that you can direct link to it. People can view the information AND explore the rest of your site.

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    I think it's possible to provide link to popup, we can pass parameter in URL, for example, domain.com/page.html#contact_popup and parse URL by js. so if we get param - execute some script
    – NickV
    Jun 23, 2011 at 21:27
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Typically I don't advocate for pop ups unless really necessary. However there are some exceptions. IF the button 'Contact Sales' appears as a persistent button, then it makes sense that you want to keep the user in the task flow or context they were in when they decided to 'Contact Sales'. So, if your user will access this button frequently, while performing a task then have them fill out the form in a pop up. That way then perform this sub-task in context of their workflow, but when done they can close the form (pop up) and not have to click back their point of origin or workflow context.

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Will your users ever want to revisit the values they entered in the form via browser navigation? If so, a pop-up breaks that. (You can mitigate that by returning a confirmation page that shows all the values they entered.)

Some users, and some browsers by default, block pop-ups, so at best you'd be making those users take special action for your site and at worst they'll conclude that your site is broken.

Do you (or does any other party) need to directly link to the form? If so, you wouldn't want to use a pop-up.

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This will depend upon the business flow a bit more than the actual aesthetics. If your user is required to continue using/ accessing relevant information on the same page, "pop-up" is the answer. If trying to "contact sales" is not bringing discontinuity to the business flow or overall experience, you can redirect to a separate page. Hope this helps.

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I opt for a popup for a few reasons:

  1. We can gather which page the user was on when they filled out the form, and can potentially guess what their interest or concern is. For example, if they are looking at a 70" screen tv product on the site, I can now ascertain the page URL as a hidden input in the form.
  2. The forms can be called from anywhere on the page, and there is no load time or page refresh where the user must wait 3-4 secs for a page to load.

I typically err on the side of less fields to fill out. I believe in most cases, that we collect the essentials, and let sales do the rest. For example, on a doctor site, name, phone, email, requested appt date. That's it. Optional message maybe. I dont want the form too look like work for the user.

I prefer fancybox as a popup, it is very responsive, and can be customized. Additionally, on some landing pages for adwords, we can trigger the popup with some javascript.

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User friendliness

It would be much easier to have a drop down section. Like when you click a button it reveals the form. This way you don't have to send them to a new page. And this prevents your page from being crowded initially. And modals don't normally display well on mobile.

Performance

The consideration about popups is that they will add extra load to your page because of the additional javascript that will get added. Often the developers that are building your site will add in libraries specific for a type of modal. Especially if the site uses Bootstrap. And many of these libraries require jQuery.

Costs considerations

Your developer will have to spend more time developing that modal "popup" and often modals that are premade will have very bad views on mobile. Development and testing of a custom modal will add much more time too.

Analytics

While there are many tools to monitor where your users are clicking and landing, it would be a decent choice to use a different contact page so that you know if someone landed there directly, this is great when you advertise and use that url for your call to action. Also you will be able to see the user flow in tools like Google Analytics for no or low cost as opposed to other tools to monitor user flow.

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