Website form not sending enquiries? A 10-minute check

A customer rings and says, "I filled in your form last week and nobody got back to me." You never saw it. If that has happened once, it has probably happened before, to people who didn't ring.

You can test this yourself in 10 minutes, today, from your phone. Here's how, and what to do if it fails.

Why it happens more than you'd think

A website form doesn't post a letter through your door. When someone presses Send, the website sends you an email on their behalf. That email can go wrong in several places, and nothing on the website tells you.

Small business owners report this a lot. On the Square seller forum, one owner wrote: "Some clients have contacted us to say they have completed the form on our website but we never received anything from them" (Square Community, July 2022). On the Shopify forum another wrote: "We aren't receiving their messages" (Shopify Community, August 2024). Both found out from customers, not from their website.

The 10-minute test

Use your phone, on mobile data. Most of your customers will.
Open your own website and find the form, as a customer would. If it takes you more than a few seconds, that's a problem too.
Fill it in with a different email address from your business one (a personal Gmail is fine) and a real UK mobile number.
Press Send. Do you see a clear message saying it worked? If you see an error, or nothing happens, a customer would see the same.
Check your business inbox. Wait five minutes. Then check the spam or junk folder too.
Check what the customer got. Did your personal email get a "thanks, we'll be in touch" reply? If not, the customer has no proof their message went anywhere.

Do this once a month, and again after any change to your website, email or domain.

If the enquiry didn't arrive

It went to spam

This is a common one. Many website forms send the email "from" the customer's own address, but from your website's server. To Gmail and Outlook, that looks like someone pretending to be your customer.

Google now asks every sender to prove who they are. Its guidelines say all senders should "set up SPF or DKIM email authentication for your sending domains" and that "messages that aren't authenticated with these methods might be marked as spam or rejected" (Google email sender guidelines).

What to do: mark the test as "not spam" for now. Then ask whoever looks after your website to send form emails from your own domain, set up properly. It's usually a short job for them.

It went to an old address

Forms send to whatever email address was typed in when the site was built. If you've changed email since, or your web designer used their own address, enquiries can quietly go somewhere you never look.

What to do: ask your web person which address the form sends to. Get it in writing.

The form itself is broken

Sometimes the form won't send at all. A common cause is a phone number box that rejects normal UK numbers, or a "prove you're not a robot" check that has stopped working. Your customer gives up and you never know they tried.

What to do: if your test failed at step 4, tell your web person exactly what you saw. A screenshot helps.

Stop it happening again

Put your phone number and email next to the form. If the form fails, the customer still has another way in.
Send every enquirer an automatic reply. They know it arrived, and you get a copy in your sent folder.
Keep a copy of every enquiry somewhere else, like a simple spreadsheet, so one broken email doesn't lose it.
Test after any change. New email, new domain, new website plugin: test the form the same day.

How Support Labs can help

When we build a website, we test the form with you before it goes live, and fixing faults in it is included in your monthly plan. Automatic replies to every enquiry come with our automation packages, or on their own for £150 setup and £50 a month.

If your test failed and you'd like a second pair of eyes, get in touch. We reply by email within 1 working day.

FAQ

How do I know if my website form is working? Fill it in yourself from your phone, using a different email address, and check your inbox and spam folder. Do it monthly.

Why do my website enquiries go to spam? Often because the form sends the email from the customer's address via your website's server, which email providers treat as suspicious. Sending from your own domain, with SPF or DKIM set up, usually fixes it.

Should I take the form off and just show my phone number? Keep both. Some people would rather type than ring, especially out of hours. Just make sure the form works.

Can a form send a reply to the customer automatically? Yes. Most forms can, and it reassures the customer their enquiry arrived.

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