How to Create a Contact Form in WordPress (The Easy Way)

Looking for a quick and easy way to create a contact form in WordPress?

WordPress has a lot of plugins and themes that you can use. The biggest challenge in creating a contact form in WordPress is actually compatibility. How do you create a contact form that doesn’t break because of plugin conflicts or your theme’s default settings?

What’s even the point of using WordPress if you have to site and code contact forms in HTML and CSS? On top of that, you’d have to manually code a way to connect your form to an email service provider.

And then, you’d have to resolve any email delivery issues.

Don’t worry. There’s a much simpler way that works with any theme and there’s zero coding involved.

In this article, we’re going to give you a WordPress contact form plugin that resolves all these issues right out of the box. We’ll even show you how to create your very first contact form using that plugin. And it will take you less than 10 minutes to create a form.

Let’s dive in.

Why You Should Create a Contact Form on Your WordPress Site

Before we get started with building your contact form, let’s talk about why you would want a contact form on your WordPress site in the first place. Isn’t it much easier to have a button that opens up Outlook and allows your web visitors to email you directly?

Short answer: NO!

But this is a perfectly reasonable question to ask. You’re probably thinking that it takes way too long to code a contact form and then put it up manually across all your money-making pages.

And you’re right. It does take a long time to create a contact form manually using code. But we’re not going to use any code in this article.

Besides, a contact form is way better than displaying your email in public. A well-designed contact form:

Protects your inbox from spam: Spam bots scrape “mailto” tags on your site to automatically collect email addresses to spam. Having a contact form with Captcha protection can prevent that.
Gathers data in a consistent, readable pattern: When you leave it up to your prospects to email you, they will often leave out crucial information that you may need. So, there’s no consistency in the data you gather. But you can design your contact form to gather all the important data you need and then email the response to you in a structured, readable way.
Automates onboarding processes: You can actually create contact forms that redirect to a different page when someone submits their form. This is a great way to inform your leads and prospects about the next steps in their onboarding journey.

Here’s a quick look at the form that we’re going to create in this article:

We’re going to do it all using one of the best WordPress form plugins in the world.

Let’s get started.

How to Add Contact Form in WordPress

The first thing you need to do is choose a WordPress contact form plugin.

Of course, a quick Google search will show you that there are way too many contact form plugins to choose from. So, we went ahead and found the best plugin for you.

We recommend using WPForms to create contact forms on your WordPress site.

WPForms is the #1 WordPress form builder plugin with over 3 million users. You get a drag and drop form builder, which means that you can create WordPress forms with incredible features in a matter of minutes.

You can also use WPForms Lite, which is the free version of WPForms. So, if you’re looking for a free form builder to get started with, you can use the Lite version. Later, when you need more powerful features for your forms, you can upgrade to the paid plans.

Step 1: Install WPForms on Your Site

Let’s start by installing WPForms on your site. Head over to the site and click on Get Started to sign up for the plugin. Then, head over to your WPForms dashboard and go to Downloads to get your plugin:

Next, install and activate the plugin on your site. And copy your license key in the same tab.

NOTE: If you need more step-by-step instructions, you should check out this article on how to install WordPress plugins.

Finally, go to your WordPress dashboard and head over to WPForms » Settings and paste in your License Key:

When you’re done, click Connect. And you’re done!

Step 2: Create a Contact Form in WordPress

Now that WPForms is installed and activated, it’s time to create your first form. Head over to WPForms » Add New:

This will open the WPForms drag and drop form builder.

To create a new form, give it a name and select your form template:

And that’s it! if you want to add or edit the fields in your contact form, you can do so from the sidebar. Darg and drop form fields to add new ones and click on the existing fields to edit them:

When you’re done, hit Save.

Step 3: Configure Notifications and Confirmations

Next, you’ll want to set up notifications and confirmations.

Notifications are emails that you get when someone fills out the form. Confirmations are meant to alert the user that they’ve successfully filled up the form. Usually, this is a “Thank You” message, but you can also redirect your users to a dedicated page.

Head over to Settings » Confirmations to configure confirmation settings:

And then in the same menu, go to Notifications to configure your notification messages:

By default, the notifications are sent to the WordPress admin email. So, if you’d like the emails to be sent somewhere else, such as the email ID of your Head of Sales, you can do that right here.

Step 4: Add Your WordPress Contact Form

You’re done configuring your WordPress contact form at this point. So, let’s go ahead and add it to a page. There are 3 basic methods to add a WPForms contact form to your WordPress site. We’re going to take a look at each.

Method#1: Add the Form Using the Block Editor

Head over to whichever page you want to add your contact form and add a new WPForms block:

Add the contact form using WPForms block

Then, select your newly created form using the dropdown menu:

And you should see your contact form get inserted automatically into your page.

Just hit Save and Publish to see your WordPress form in action.

Method #2: Add Your Contact Form Using WPForms Shortcodes

WPForms also generates a shortcode for each WordPress contact form. You can copy the contact form shortcode by visiting WPForms » All Forms:

And then, paste the shortcode in any post or page you want. It’s that simple.

If you’re new to shortcodes, you should check out this article on how to add a shortcode on WordPress sites.

Method #3: Add Your Contact Form in the Sidebars

The sidebar is one of the most underused features in most WordPress sites. We highly recommend inserting a contact form in your site’s sidebars. Head over to Appearance » Widgets in your WordPress dashboard and add the WPForms widget to your sidebar:

And you’re done!

How to Track Your WordPress Form Conversions

Once you’re done creating your form and adding it to different pages, you should also set up a good way to track and measure conversions. We recommend using MonsterInsights to track your form analytics.

MonsterInsights is the #1 Google Analytics plugin and we love the software.

The plugin is super easy to set up and you can track your form conversion analytics using MonsterInsights reports:

And it integrates seamlessly with WPForms.

Wrapping Up

That’s all for this one, folks!

By now, you’ve created your first WordPress contact form and set up conversion analytics for it.

Now, all that’s left is generating traffic to your site so that your contact forms can get to work. A simple way to do that is to start using push notifications. Sending push notifications is a great way to generate repeat traffic for your site. If that’s something you’re interested in, you should check out these articles as well:

We recommend using PushEngage to send your push notifications. PushEngage is the #1 push notification software in the world. So, if you haven’t already, get started with PushEngage today.