Contact Forms - are useful?

Question

What percentage of people using contact forms on website?

It's useful element or not ? Better option is contact form directly on website or popup (after click button) ?

Maybe better is put only email address?

I am making design studio website.

Answer 1

I try to make you the decision easier.

If the site has many different services and you want to guide the visitor when he has a request, a contact form could be helpful because you could help him to reach the right persons. If you have manageable contact persons (e.g. site owner, sales & support), you could give the user the opportunity to contact them directly by email.

Contact forms could be a more general way to push a request and a email is connected with more efforts and willpower by the user. Perhaps he has to put in more formality than in a simple contact form. A contact form could invite users more to contact you than an email address but an email could have a higher commitment.

Additionally, it depends how you want to receive and manage requests and which information you need. If you want to save them in a database or make them accessible via an internal website for more people, a contact form is a way for it. Have you information which you need to get from a request, then the contact form is also a better way than giving the visitor an email address and a list of needed informations.

Answer 2

This is not anything backed up by data, but - I hate simple web contact forms, because they leave no trace in my inbox/outbox: I fill in the form, and I have to remember what I wrote and schedule a reminder in case nobody follows up.

If you add a web contact form, ensure you send the communication back to the user. Personally, I prefer to click any "mailto:" link since then it's already in my "Sent" folder, which is the place I scan for would-be reminders now and then.