How to Create a Form on Your Site – No Stress, No Mess!

If getting business is one of the purposes of your website, you’re going to need to give your customers a way to contact you.

I think you need a couple of ways, actually. Some people want to be able to call you, some are happy to email you and others like filling out a form. I say it all comes down to what you are comfortable with. (Read to the end for the story about the simple form to the right!)

The topic of this post, however, is FORMS.

When I was a kid and people actually used the Yellow Pages, the slogan was “Let your fingers do the walking.” The idea was that your business would be found in a book of phone numbers and you’d get a call.

That still happens – via online listings – but more and more people just like to fill out a form that goes directly to your email inbox. This method becomes particularly useful if your form is built to collect pertinent information.

That way, when you do actually connect, the basics are already known. You can both get down to business right away!

Start With the Simplest for Immediate Results!

I have three favorite WordPress plugins. These are – in order of complexity and therefore, functionality – Jetpack Contact Form, Contact Form 7, and Gravity Forms. The first two are free and Gravity Forms costs $39 for a personal license (as of the date of this post) and is worth every penny!

Jetpack is a collection of different plugins created by Automattic and WordPress.com. It comes automatically with all new installations of WordPress and you can activate (or not) the individual plugins in the collection. One of the plugins is called – simply enough – Contact Form.

To use Contact Form, all you need to do is the following:

1. Install Jetpack if it’s not already loaded up on your WordPress site.
2. Activate Contact Form.
3. Insert a form on a page or post by clicking on the form icon in the text edit area.
4. Build your form using the form layout builder which is displayed as a result of doing #3 above.

That’s it! It’s really that easy!

The video below guides you through setting up a simple form on a WordPress page using Jetpack’s Contact Form. It assumes you already have Jetpack installed, but if you don’t, just click on the Add New link under Plugins on the left side of your WordPress dashboard. Type in “Jetpack” in the Search box and click on Search Plugins. Look for “Jetpack by WordPress.com” in the search results – it’ll probably be the first one listed – and click on the Install Now link. Now check out the video for the “how to.”

The Story

I’ve always been a big fan of forms. There’s something about checking a box that just really does it for me. And for those of us who are a little shy, a form is a safe way to communicate.

The “simple form” above is a representation of the form I sent to a boy named Jeff in my 1st grade class on whom I had a major crush. He had red hair and freckles, like Opie on Mayberry RFD. I can’t remember now what box he checked but I do remember feeling like a genius for devising the form!