How to Create a High-Converting Contact Form Popup in WordPress (2023)
Are you looking to generate more leads and conversions from your WordPress website? One highly effective strategy is adding a contact form popup to your key pages.
Contact forms allow your visitors to easily get in touch with questions, feedback, quote requests, and more. By presenting the contact form in a popup, you make it more prominent and accessible from any page. This removes friction and increases the likelihood that visitors will submit their information.
In this in-depth guide, we‘ll show you exactly how to create a contact form popup in WordPress step-by-step. We‘ll cover everything from building the form itself to configuring the ideal popup display settings for maximum conversions.
But first, let‘s dive into some of the key benefits of using contact form popups on your WordPress site.
Benefits of Contact Form Popups
The average website conversion rate is just 2.35% according to WordStream. That means over 97% of your hard-earned traffic leaves without taking a meaningful action. Contact form popups are an effective way to convert more of those visitors into leads.
With a contact form popup, you can:
- Generate more leads by making it easy for visitors to get in touch
- Improve the user experience by providing a quick way to ask questions or give feedback without leaving the page
- Segment leads by using different contact forms for different offerings or customer types
- Retarget leads by connecting your forms to your email marketing or CRM software
- Learn about your audience by asking key questions on your forms
When implemented well, contact form popups can have a huge impact on your lead generation. One of our customers, Kennedy Law, increased inbound client leads by 140% after adding contact form popups to their website.
Now that you understand the power of contact form popups, let‘s walk through how you can create your own in WordPress.
How to Create a Contact Form in WordPress
The first step is building your actual contact form in WordPress. You‘ll need a dedicated WordPress form plugin to do this.
We recommend using WPForms. It‘s the best drag & drop form builder for WordPress used by over 5 million websites. WPForms makes it incredibly easy to create custom contact forms in just a few minutes with no coding required.
To get started, install and activate the WPForms plugin on your WordPress site. You can follow this guide for step-by-step instructions on how to install a WordPress plugin.
Once the plugin is activated, go to WPForms » Add New to create a new form.
First, enter a name for your contact form. Then choose the "Simple Contact Form" template to start with.
You‘ll be taken to the drag and drop form builder. Here you can easily customize your form by adding, removing, or reordering the fields.
The simple contact form template includes the following fields:
- Name
- Comment or Message
You can click on any field to change its settings. For example, you can mark fields as required, add placeholder text, change the label, and more.
We also recommend adding a GDPR agreement checkbox if you have customers in the EU or UK. This will ensure that you are collecting and handling data in compliance with privacy laws.
Once you‘re satisfied with your form, click "Save".
Next, go to Settings » General to configure your form settings.
Here you can:
- Change the submit button text
- Enable spam prevention (recommended)
- Disable storing entry information in WordPress
- Enable AJAX form submission
We recommend enabling the anti-spam protection. This will add a reCAPTCHA to your form to stop contact form spam from bots.
Once you‘ve updated the settings, click "Save" again.
Your WordPress contact form is now ready! The final thing to do is set up email notifications so that you get alerted when someone submits a form.
How to Set Up Contact Form Email Notifications
By default, completed contact forms will be sent to the admin email address for your WordPress site.
However, you likely want to send them somewhere else, such as a dedicated customer support inbox or your CRM.
To configure this, go to WPForms » Settings » Notifications.
Here you can set:
- Who the notification email gets sent "To" (separate multiple email addresses with a comma)
- The "From Name" and "From Email" for the notification
- The email subject line
- The email message
You can use "Smart Tags" to dynamically populate information from the form submission into the email notification. For example, {field_id="name"} will automatically insert the submitter‘s name.
Feel free to customize the email settings however you‘d like. Then click "Save" to update your notifications.
Now, whenever someone submits a contact form on your site, you‘ll receive an email notification with their details.
With the form itself created, the next step is to put it into a popup to display on your WordPress site. We‘ll show you how to do that next.
How to Create a Contact Form Popup with OptinMonster
The easiest way to create a contact form popup is using OptinMonster. It‘s the best WordPress popup plugin used by over 1.2 million websites.
OptinMonster comes with 50+ pre-built popup templates and a codeless drag and drop builder. It‘s simple to customize any template to fit your site‘s design and branding.
You can display your popups based on advanced triggers and targeting rules, such as:
- Time on page
- Exit intent (when a user is about to leave)
- Scroll position
- Location
- Device
- Referral source
OptinMonster also integrates seamlessly with all the top form plugins like WPForms. So you can easily drop any of your WordPress forms into OptinMonster‘s popup builder.
To get started, sign up for an OptinMonster account if you haven‘t already. Then install the OptinMonster WordPress plugin on your site and connect your account.
Next, go to OptinMonster » Create New Campaign to build a new popup.
First, select the "Popup" campaign type. Then choose a template.
We‘ll use the "Magnet" template for this example. It has an eye-catching design perfect for contact forms. Of course, feel free to choose a different template for your campaign.
Name your campaign something descriptive, like "Contact Form Popup", and then click the "Build" button.
In the campaign builder, you can fully customize the design and layout of the popup. To add your contact form, drag the "WPForms" block into the popup editor.
If you already published your WordPress contact form, you can select it from the dropdown menu here. OptinMonster will automatically embed the form into your popup. Easy, right?
Feel free to make any other design changes to your popup at this stage. You can change the images, colors, fonts, and more using the left-hand options panel.
Once you‘re happy with the design, it‘s time to set your display rules. Click the "Display Rules" tab at the top of the editor.
By default, OptinMonster will display the popup after 5 seconds to all visitors. That‘s a decent starting point, but let‘s customize this further.
First, if you only want to show this popup on certain pages, you can set that under "Conditions". For example, you may want to trigger your contact form popup only on your product or pricing pages to catch high-intent traffic.
Under the "Triggers" section, you can choose when the popup will appear. Some effective options include:
- Exit intent, to capture visitors as they‘re about to leave
- Scroll trigger, so the popup only appears when someone has scrolled X% of the page (showing engagement)
- MonsterLink™, which lets you trigger the popup when a user clicks a specific link or button
Feel free to configure your display settings however you‘d like. Just make sure to show the contact form popup to the right users at the right stage.
When you‘re satisfied with your display rules, click the Publish tab to make your popup live.
Set the status to "Published" and you‘re all set! Your WordPress contact form popup is now up and running.
We recommend monitoring the results in your OptinMonster analytics dashboard. You can see helpful engagement metrics like views, conversions, and conversion rate.
Over time, you can run A/B tests to experiment with different copy, designs, offers, and display settings to optimize your contact form popups. Even small tweaks can have a huge impact on your conversion rates.
Best Practices for Contact Form Popups
We‘ve walked through step-by-step how to create a contact form popup in WordPress. Now, let‘s discuss some best practices and tips to make your popups as effective as possible.
Keep Your Form Short
In general, the fewer fields you include on your form, the higher your completion rate will be. Only ask for the information you really need. Usually name, email address, and a message field are plenty.Use Compelling Copy
The headline and description text on your contact form popup need to persuade visitors to complete the form. Mention the benefit of contacting you and include a strong call-to-action.Offer an Incentive
People are more likely to provide their contact information if they get something in return. Consider offering a coupon code, free quote, or entry into a contest in exchange for submitting your contact form.Enable Double Opt-in
With double opt-in, users will receive a confirmation email after submitting your form that they need to click before being added to your list. This ensures you‘re only gathering real leads who genuinely want to hear from you.Follow Up Promptly
Once someone submits your contact form, follow up with them as quickly as possible. If you wait too long to reply, your lead could go cold. Use an autoresponder to immediately confirm that you received their message and set expectations for when they‘ll hear back from you.Segment Your Audience
The more you can personalize your marketing, the better. Use the information you gather from your contact forms to segment your leads into different buckets. Then you can send more targeted emails and offers to each segment.
Real-World Contact Form Popup Examples
Let‘s look at a few real-world examples of contact form popups in the wild.
This popup offering a free 30 minute website analysis uses powerful copy and runs on exit intent to grab visitors‘ attention before they leave:
This contact form popup advertising a discount is a great way to capture impulse buyers:
For even more inspiration, check out our roundup of the best contact form popup examples.
We hope this guide helped you learn how to create a contact form popup in WordPress to skyrocket your conversions. With the right tools and strategies, you can turn more of your website traffic into valuable leads.
Looking for even more ways to grow your WordPress site? Check out our guides on how to get more email subscribers and how to get more traffic to your website.
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