Your website has one job: convince someone to get in touch. After the usual “who you are, what you do, why it matters,” everything leads to a single action — sending an enquiry.

So when enquiries suddenly dry up, most people jump to dramatic conclusions.
“Is my offer bad?”
“Is the market dead?”
“Has someone undercut me?”
“Did my CEO get cancelled?”

A lot of the time, none of that is happening.

It might be that what's actually happening is much simpler: your contact form isn’t sending messages through. And because forms fail quietly, you often don’t realise until weeks (or months) later.

Here are five quick checks that fix most silent-form problems.

1. Your emails are going to spam

If the form “works” but you haven’t heard from anyone in ages, this is the most common culprit. Your notifications might be hitting spam, or your domain isn’t authorised to send emails on behalf of your website tool.

What to check

• Make sure your domain has SPF, DKIM, and ideally DMARC set up.
• Confirm your form tool (Webflow, WordPress, Basin, Netlify, Xano, etc.) is sending from a verified sender.
• Add the notification address to your inbox’s safe senders list.

Quick fix

Submit a test using a real email and check spam. If it’s sitting there, problem found.

2. Your form isn’t actually sending anything anywhere

Yes — this happens more than you'd think. After a redesign, CMS update, duplicated page, or plugin change, the form may no longer be connected to an inbox at all.

What to check

• Confirm the notification email is correct and the inbox works normally.
• If using a third-party service, check the action URL hasn’t changed or expired.
• Make sure you haven’t hit a submission cap on a free tier (Basin/Netlify/etc.).
• Double-check you’re not accidentally testing the staging version of the site.

Quick fix

If the form logs the submission but you don’t receive an email, the notification settings are wrong — not the form itself.

3. The form validation is broken

This one quietly kills enquiries. A visitor thinks they submitted their message… but the form rejected it without clearly telling them why.

Mis-tagged fields, wrong “required” settings, JavaScript clashes, expired ReCAPTCHA keys — this stuff causes chaos behind the scenes.

What to check

• Test every field yourself.
• Make sure required fields aren’t hidden by conditional logic.
• Check the browser console for JS errors if you’re comfortable.
• Confirm CAPTCHA/ReCAPTCHA/Turnstile hasn’t expired.

Quick fix

Turn off any custom scripts temporarily. If the form works without them, you’ve found the conflict.

4. Your form is too long or too annoying

Sometimes the silence has nothing to do with tech.
If your form is a nightmare to get through, people bounce.

Too many fields. Too many required boxes. Too much typing.
Add in an unresponsive mobile layout, and you’re website is losing customers right at the last hurdle.

What to check

• Aim for 5–7 short fields max for first contact.
• Remove anything you don’t absolutely need at this stage.
• Minimise long text areas — use dropdowns/radio fields instead.
• Check the mobile layout: no one wants to pinch-zoom through a form at 10pm.

Quick fix

Strip it back. Move detailed questions to your follow-up email. Fix the layout.

5. Your site is serving a cached or outdated version of the form

The sneakiest one.

Your form might be updated and working perfectly — but your visitors are seeing an old version cached by your CDN, hosting, plugin, proxy, or browser.
Meaning: they’re filling in a broken version you thought you’d replaced weeks ago.

What to check

• Clear and purge cache at all levels: CDN, hosting, plugins, proxies.
• Make sure you’re viewing the live domain, not an old staging link.
• Test the page in an incognito window.
• Check if your form provider updated embed or action URLs recently.

Quick fix

Purge everything, republish the site, then run a fresh test from a private browser session.

How to avoid silent forms in the future

A contact form should never be “set and forget.” Add a quick monthly or quarterly check:

• Submit a test on desktop and mobile
• Check spam/junk folders
• Confirm domain email authentication still passes
• Make sure notifications go to someone who still works there
• Review the form and remove any newly-added friction

Silent forms quietly bleed leads. But once you know where to look, the fixes are usually fast and painless.

If you don’t want to dig through all the tech

If all of this feels a bit too “techy” and you just want your enquiries to land again, reach out.
We’ll audit your form, fix whatever’s blocking enquiries, and make sure messages actually reach your inbox.