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Contact form friction audit

A form that asks too much, hides its labels or blocks people with a puzzle loses enquiries silently. We inspect every form on your page field by field.

No signup · Results in ~40 seconds · Nothing stored except the shareable report

What we check and why

What makes a form hard to complete

Every extra field, unclear label and mandatory box gives a visitor another reason to stop. On a phone it is worse: small inputs, a keyboard that covers half the screen and an image CAPTCHA that refuses to accept the third set of traffic lights. The Form Friction Score adds up these obstacles for each form on the page you enter.

Total, required and optional fields — and whether phone number or postal address are mandatory.
Visible labels connected to each input, not just placeholder text that disappears when typing.
Autocomplete attributes, so browsers can fill in name, email and phone in one tap.
CAPTCHA type, file uploads and multi-step layouts.
Privacy notice or checkbox near the form, and marketing opt-ins that must be unticked by default.
Submit button wording: Send enquiry or Book a call says more than Submit.

Less is usually more

For a first contact, name, email or phone, and a short message are enough for most firms. You can collect case details, documents and identification later through a secure intake process. If you need to qualify enquiries — for example the area of law or the type of tax return — a single dropdown is less tiring than five open questions.

Labels matter for accessibility too. Screen readers announce the label when a field receives focus; a field with only placeholder text may be read as an unnamed edit box. Autocomplete attributes help everyone, and WCAG 2.1 asks for them on fields that collect personal data about the user.

Privacy and consent at the form

Under the GDPR you must tell people how you use the data they send, typically with a short line and a link to your privacy policy beside the button. A mandatory consent checkbox is not always required when you process an enquiry to answer it, but a marketing opt-in is a separate purpose and must never be pre-ticked — the Court of Justice of the EU confirmed in its 2019 Planet49 ruling that pre-ticked boxes do not give valid consent.

Spam protection can be invisible: honeypot fields, time checks or privacy-friendly challenges avoid sending every visitor through an image puzzle. If you use a third-party CAPTCHA, check whether it loads before consent.

Frequently asked questions

How many fields should a contact form have?

As few as you need to reply. Three to five fields covers most first enquiries. Ask yourself for each field whether you could answer the enquiry without it.

Is a CAPTCHA bad?

Image challenges add friction and can be hard for people with disabilities. Invisible or low-friction options, or server-side spam filtering, usually stop most spam with less cost to genuine visitors.

Do I need a GDPR checkbox on my contact form?

Not necessarily for answering an enquiry, where another legal basis usually applies, but you do need to inform people, typically with a privacy notice link. Ask your data protection adviser for your specific situation.

Why do you check the button text?

The button is the last thing someone reads before committing. Specific wording that says what happens next reassures the visitor more than a generic Submit or Send.

Which page should I test?

Enter the page that holds your main form, such as /contact. If the homepage has no form, the audit will report that and you can test the contact page separately.