Why Your Cleantech Company’s Contact Form Isn’t Converting (and How to Fix It)

Cleantech contact forms are often afterthoughts - generic forms tacked onto your website after your designers have labored over the carefully designed home page and sleek landing pages.

But in that case, you’re missing out.

Too many times, lackluster contact forms turn off 81% of web-browsing leads or (if they do bother to fill out the form) leave them in limbo for days before a response. This underwhelming initial customer experience drives prospects to seek more timely and welcoming alternatives.

Cleantech companies deserve better. Instead of underwhelming online visitors, your contact form has the potential to convert them, speed up your sales process, and help your team close more deals.

And in the experience of Bluehouse Group’s president, Greg Brand, and our director of business development, Connor Greenbaum, it may only need a few tweaks to get there.

So today, Connor and Greg are sharing their top three contact form tips, complete with examples from cleantech companies including Nextamp, Ekotrope, and Bluehouse client NRG Systems:

Ask Leads What They Need

“Often, cleantech companies have a totally generic contact form - nothing to help segment the customer and get their query to the right person,” shares Greg. “This limits that form’s efficiency. It doesn’t capture enough information for a quick, high-quality turnaround.

"For example, a company may offer solar battery storage among other services. If a prospect interested in battery storage fills out a generic form, their query just goes to the general inbox. Someone has to read it, notice that it’s about battery storage, and forward it to Bob in the storage department."

“By the time Bob even sees it, the lead may have waited an entire day. They’ve probably gotten impatient and are looking for another provider.”

To keep website visitors’ interest with a faster turnaround, Greg first recommends that cleantech companies capture relevant information in the contact form itself.

This doesn’t have to - in fact, it shouldn’t - burden on you or your leads. Your form should still be short and simple; in many cases, a straightforward menu does the trick. Community solar provider NextAmp provides an example:

Here, if a lead clicks “energy storage,” that automatically clarifies to whom they should be routed. (More on how to do that instantly in the next section.)

“The more specific your inquiry form is, the more efficient it is,” explains Greg. “This level of detail attracts qualified and genuinely interested prospects, while limiting the number of ‘tire-kickers.’ We’ve seen similar segmenting actually save our clients’ time by reducing the unqualified inquiries they have to deal with.”

Another New England cleantech company, energy efficiency software startup Ekotrope, finds it useful to segment leads by role:

Build Trust with Verifiable Information

Once your contact form segments and automatically routes online leads with your CRM system, you’re already ahead of the game. But there’s one more part: getting your leads to fill out the form in the first place.

“People want to know who they’re talking to,” says Connor.

Security concerns are the leading reason leads abandon forms. If a nameless, place-less, contact-less form makes them suspect a company’s legitimacy, you’ll never even hear from them - no matter how excellent your services actually are.

With that in mind, Greg and the Bluehouse team included proof in NRG’s contact form, including NRG’s

• street address

• information for each main contact

• hours of operation

• driving directions

These markers, combined with the executive team’s names and short profiles in the “About” section, help prospects to verify NRG’s legitimacy and feel comfortable filling out the contact form.

“This was part of the overall website redesign we did for NRG, which helped increase their qualified leads by 1300%,” says Connor. “Having a transparent, trustworthy contact form definitely helped.”

Optimized Contact Form = More Conversions

Once your contact form builds trust, segments online visitors, and routes them immediately to the right person, you’ve developed a lead machine. This prospect-friendly process will increase your online leads’ quantity and quality, while your company’s speedy response time will drive more sales.

Of course, optimized contact forms are one single step in creating a high-converting cleantech website. So whatever stage your project’s at - from “you know, our company should have a better website” to “we need to increase our online conversions and SEO rankings” - we’re happy to chat about how our team can help your business thrive. Just get in touch!