Form copy

What form copy is

Form copy is every word on a form that the customer does not type. The field labels. The hint under a field. The words on the button. The sentence above it saying what happens when they press it. The error message when something is wrong, and the message shown when it has worked.

It is not form design or form building. Where the fields sit and how the form is coded are somebody else’s job. It is also not signup and checkout copy, which is the same craft applied to the one form where money changes hands and which needs a different kind of reassurance. This is every other form on the site: the enquiry, the quote request, the booking, the callback, the download.

When you need one

The usual sign is a form visited far more often than it is submitted. The page above it has done its job; the form is where people change their mind.

The second sign is the quality of what arrives. If most of your enquiries lack the one detail you need before you can quote, the label is asking the wrong question. A label rewritten to say what you will do with the answer fixes that faster than a follow-up email ever will.

You do not need this if nobody reaches the form. A form that gets a handful of visits a week is not your problem, and the money belongs further up the page: conversion copy on the page itself, or getting people to it at all. If the page around the form is the weak part, with no reason to enquire and no sense of what follows, then contact page copy comes first and this becomes the cheap follow-up.

What gets rewritten

The received advice is to cut fields until almost nothing is left. It is not wrong, but it is applied first because it is easy, and it is the smaller of the two levers. A form that asks for six things and explains each one plainly is finished more often than a form that asks for three things the reader has to guess at. Better labels beat fewer fields, and unlike cutting fields, better labels do not cost you the information you need in order to quote.

So the fields stay unless there is a real case for cutting one, and the words around them change.

• Labels. Each field named in the customer’s vocabulary rather than after the database column it fills. “Service type” becomes the list of things you actually sell, in the words people use when they telephone.
• Hints. One short line under any field where a reasonable person would hesitate: why you are asking, what a good answer looks like, and what to do if they do not know.
• Error messages. The part nobody writes. Defaults say “Invalid input” and leave the customer to work out which field and what is wrong with it. Each one is rewritten to name the field, say what is wrong and say what to type instead, in a register that does not blame the person.
• The line above the button. What happens after they press it: who sees it, who replies, how soon, and what you will not do with the address. Two sentences, and on most forms they change the outcome more than anything else in this list.
• The confirmation. The words shown or emailed when it has worked, so nobody submits twice or rings the office to check.

What you get

A rewrite sheet per form. One table per form covering every label, hint, button, error and confirmation message, old wording beside new, with a line saying what each change is meant to fix. Your developer works straight from it.

The error message set. Written for every state the form can reach, including the ones nobody thinks about: a required field left blank, a wrongly formatted phone number, and the server failing after the customer has typed everything.

A short note on the fields. Where a field genuinely should go, or become optional, or move to a second step, I say so and say why. Your developer decides.

A worked example

An illustration, not a client. A Winnipeg company that installs and services commercial refrigeration has one quote form, reached from every service page. It has eleven fields. It is visited many times a day and submitted a handful of times a week, and much of what arrives cannot be quoted because the make and model line is blank or filled in with a guess.

Two fields go: the company size dropdown, which nobody inside the business uses, and the “how did you hear about us” box. The rest stay. “Model number” becomes “Make and model, if you can find it”, with a hint saying where the plate usually sits on a walk-in cooler and that “not sure” is an acceptable answer. “Message” becomes “What is going wrong, in your own words”. The button changes from “Submit” to “Request a quote”, and the line above it says a technician rather than a salesperson replies by the next working morning, and that quotes are free. Four written error messages replace one generic warning. Nine fields, better answers, and the office stops chasing model numbers by telephone.

How it runs

1. A half-hour call. Which forms, what arrives now, and what is missing from it when it does. No charge.
2. Filling the forms in myself. On a phone, including deliberately wrong entries, so I see every error message the way a customer does. One working day.
3. The rewrite sheets. Three to five working days after the call for one or two forms, longer for a site with a form on every page.
4. One round of revisions. Usually about what you are obliged to ask for and therefore cannot cut.
5. Handover to the developer. The final sheets and a short call, so nothing is guessed at during the build.

About a week from the first call to handover for a small set of forms.

What it costs

Form copy is quoted as a fixed price in CAD after the half-hour call, because one enquiry form and a site carrying fourteen forms are different jobs. The pricing page shows the four ways of working and where a small piece like this sits against them. The price is agreed in writing before anything starts.

What happens next

Three things usually follow. The confirmation turns out to be the most neglected screen in the business and gets its own attention, which is the page shown after the form. The enquiries that now arrive complete need answering in order, and that is where a nurture sequence starts earning. And if the form sits on a shop rather than a brochure site, the same rewrite is worth doing at the checkout, which is the money step and a different job again. The forms are finished work on their own, and nothing further is assumed.