Inquiries & Booking
the form, the fields it collects, and what happens after someone submits it
The inquiry form is the site's only conversion.
The fields
Short enough to finish on a phone, structured enough that the reply can be useful.
| Field | Why it's there |
|---|---|
| Name | |
| Phone | Optional. Some of this audience prefers a call back |
| Event type | A select, not free text. Wedding, meeting, celebration, memorial, other. Makes "which event types are we losing" answerable |
| Preferred date | A date, plus a "flexible" option |
| Approximate headcount | A number or a band. Qualifies the inquiry before anyone replies |
| How did you hear about us | Shows whether the directory listings are working |
| Message | One box, at the end, optional |
Keep event type, date and headcount as structured fields rather than folding them into the message.
Someone arriving from the weddings page should find "Wedding" already selected.
What happens next
What response time is being committed to on the thank-you page?
Submission
The inquiry is stored in the CMS and emailed to whoever handles bookings.
Confirmation
The visitor lands on a thank-you page that says when to expect a reply, and repeats the phone number for anyone who would rather not wait.
Reply
A person answers. The site's job ends here.
Tour scheduling
Booking a tour converts better when a visitor picks a time themselves rather than waiting for a reply to arrange one. A third-party scheduling embed does this without building anything.
It depends on whether someone's calendar can be committed to tours in advance.
Is there capacity to hold open tour slots, or do tours have to be arranged individually?
Spam and abuse
Venue inquiry forms attract a steady volume of vendor solicitation. Handled the same way as the main website's forms: a spam check that doesn't require the visitor to solve a puzzle, and rate limiting.
Privacy
The form collects contact details and event information. It follows the same consent and privacy handling as the main website, and the inquiry record has a retention period rather than living forever.
A form that collects contact details needs a privacy page to link to, so the site has one from launch.
Does the venue site get its own privacy policy, or link to mowp.org's? Linking works only if the existing policy covers a separate site and a separate form.
How long inquiry records are kept, and whether inquiries feed any mailing list. If a newsletter opt-in is wanted it has to be an explicit checkbox, not an assumption.