Designing a Great Inquiry Form

Overview

An inquiry form should:

• Adapt to the needs of the parent

• Gather the appropriate information that you need to take action

• Be quick and easy to use

Adaptive Forms

We create one Inquiry form for your school that's dynamic based on answers selected for different questions.  This allows flexibility so you can have an Inquiry form for domestic vs international students, day vs boarding, middle school vs lower school, etc. Although it's the same form, its adaptive in nature as the questions can be shown or hidden based on selections made.

Gathering Information & Ease of Use

One way we make our forms easy to use is by only showing fields that are necessary based on selections the parent has made.

For the rest of your form, consider carefully what data you need now compared to what data you’ll need at a later stage (like the application).  Requiring too much data on the form risks the parent not submitting the inquiry form.  Research has proven over and over that too many fields or steps impedes completion.  However, you also need certain information to effectively communicate with the family. 

A good example on balancing this is family demographic information.  During the inquiry stage, you need student information and primary contact information including email, phone and address.  However, you may not need secondary demographic information like all siblings info or additional parent information like employment until the application step. See below for our best practice recommendations.

We require some basic information be collected:

• Student name

• Apply Grade

• Apply Term

• 1 Parent name/contact info

• 1 Household address

Additional information we recommend:

• Interests

• Event Registration

• How did you hear about us?

Best Practices

Your website should link to your inquiry form in multiple places

If you have a page for the following, link to your inquiry form:

• School visits (tour, open house, shadow day)

• Financial aid

• Academic and athletic programs (invite to a game or academic interest meeting)

Ask strategic questions

Once prospects are on the form to get what they need, you can collect much more data than was previously possible with a traditional inquiry form. The more relevant the question, the more likely families are to answer it.  Using gating questions (such as “Is your child a boarding or day student?”) to hide fields which capture information that may be optional (boarding information) but will be required if present (if the name field renders it is required as it is creating a new entity).  A few examples:

• Give families a place to ask a question about anything they want and to select their preferred contact method for the response.  Some may prefer a phone call and others may prefer email.

• Based on the interest selected, you might invite them to a related event.

Make it friendly and conversational!

Your inquiry can start the conversation for you.  Some examples:

• Welcome to our School! How can we help you today?

• Tell us more…what question can we answer?

• Would you like our help navigating through the financial aid process?