# What fields should a land surveying or utility locating quote request form have, and why do visitors leave without sending one? By Pat, Harvey Rupert (https://harveyrupert.com/about/). Published 2026-10-30. Last reviewed 2026-10-30. Canonical: https://harveyrupert.com/guides/quote-form-fields/ **Short answer:** A quote request form for a land surveying or utility locating firm needs a name, phone, email, site address, type of work and a short note on what the work is for. Add timing and a way to send a plan or sketch, and mark everything else optional. Then show a plain confirmation. Visitors leave when asked for things they cannot answer or told nothing about what happens next. This is website advice, not surveying advice. It covers how the quote request form on a surveying or utility locating firm's site can be set up so that more visitors send it and the office receives enquiries it can act on. Where it describes what our own sites do, that comes from the templates Harvey Rupert builds with. ## Why do visitors leave a quote form without sending it? Almost every reason comes down to effort or doubt. - **A field they cannot answer.** A homeowner may not know a lot number, or what the survey they need is called. A required field they cannot fill stops them, and they ring the next firm. - **Too many fields.** Each one is a small chore, and on a phone it is a bigger one. - **No idea what happens next.** If the form gives no hint of who replies, how, or when, sending it feels like posting a letter into a void. - **An error that wipes the form.** Nielsen Norman Group's form guidance says to keep what the person typed and to say exactly what is wrong. - **A form that does not work well on a mobile.** Many enquiries start on a phone, on site or in a car park. The same guidance says to remove fields that collect information that can be derived in some other way, collected more conveniently at a later date, or simply omitted. It also says to limit a form to only one or two optional fields, clearly labelled as optional, so pick from the optional rows below rather than adding them all. A quote request is not a newsletter sign-up, though. The aim is an enquiry you can act on, so a field earns its place if it changes whether or how you would quote, or who in the office should pick the request up. A field that only fills a spreadsheet does not. ## Which fields does a quote request form need? Most of these fields are the same for surveyors and locators. The right-hand column is a suggestion for what to require, not a rule. | Field | What it does for the office | Make it | |---|---|---| | Name | Who to ask for when you ring or reply | Required | | Phone | The quickest way to talk through a job | Required | | Email | Where the written reply goes | Required | | Site address and suburb | Where the work is, and whether it is in your area | Required | | Type of work | Sends the enquiry to the right person | Required, as a list with a "Not sure yet" choice | | What it is for | Context that shapes the quote, such as a planned fence, a council condition or a builder's start date | Optional free text with an example in the hint | | Timing | Separates this month's job from next year's plan | Optional short list, not a date picker | | Plan or sketch | Shows the area in question at a glance | Optional: an upload field, or a line saying "reply to our confirmation email with it" | | Best time to call | Saves phone tag with someone on site all day | Optional | In the sites we build, the quote form asks for name, phone, email, site address and type of work as required fields, with timing and a free-text note as optional extras. The type list ends with a "Not sure yet" choice, so nobody is stuck at the dropdown, and the form on each service page has that service's type already chosen. The plan field and the best-time field are ideas to consider, not something every site we build has today. ## Should the form ask for a Lot and DP? Optionally, and only for a form-design reason. Many Australian clients can find a lot and plan number on their rates notice or title, and if they can type it in, the office may need fewer follow-up questions. Many cannot, and a client who cannot should still be able to send the form. So the field is optional, and it carries a visible hint saying where the number can be found. In the sites we build, the label changes with the state, because the wording does: Lot/DP in NSW, Lot/RP or SP in Queensland, Lot/PS or TP in Victoria, Lot/Deposited Plan in Western Australia and Allotment/DP/FP in South Australia. The hint reads along the lines of "from your rates notice or title". This guide says nothing about what any survey needs. What information a particular job requires is for the surveyor to decide and ask. The form's job is to make it easy to send what the client does know. ## What should a utility locating form ask? Locating enquiries often come from principal contractors and developers as well as homeowners. They tend to know what they want to receive, so the form can ask for: - the site address, with a note field for access (gates, locked areas, who will let the locator in); - what they want at the end, in their words, such as locating existing services, mapping them, or both; - timing, as a short list; - an optional BYDA enquiry reference, if they have already lodged one. BYDA's own guide says a lodged enquiry produces a confirmation email, so many clients will have something to quote. A "Lot and DP" field matters less here than a clear site address. Keep the type-of-work list in the words your own clients use. ## What should happen after someone sends the form? The visitor should see that it worked, and what comes next. - **A confirmation on the page.** In the sites we build, a message appears where the form was, thanking them and giving the firm's reply line, so they do not wonder whether the button did anything. - **A failure message that gives a way out.** If sending fails, the message tells them to call the firm instead, and what they typed stays on the page. Put the phone number next to the form so they can. - **Spam protection that stays out of the way.** The sites we build use a bot check and a hidden field that only automated tools fill in. Set the reply line yourself, and promise only what the office will keep. A reply promise the office misses is worse than none. This guide does not suggest a reply time or price to quote. ## Where do the enquiries go? In the sites we build, every enquiry lands in the firm's email. WhatsApp lead alerts come with the Paddock plan or the WhatsApp add-on. Whatever you use, send enquiries to an address that more than one person watches, not only to one inbox that is empty when that person is on site. Send yourself a test enquiry now and then, from a phone, to check the whole path still works. ## Can a quote email go out automatically? Instant Quote is an add-on for Australian firms, and the firm approves every customer email. More on the [Instant Quote page](https://harveyrupert.com/add-ons/instant-quote/). ## What is the one-page checklist? Use this to review an existing quote form or to brief a new one. For the pages around the form, see [what a surveying firm's website needs](https://harveyrupert.com/guides/what-a-surveying-firms-website-needs/). ## Sources 1. [Website Forms Usability: Top 10 Recommendations](https://www.nngroup.com/articles/web-form-design/), Nielsen Norman Group, 2016-05-01 2. [Guide to free plans](https://www.byda.com.au/before-you-dig/guide-to-free-plans/), Before You Dig Australia (BYDA), Page last modified 2026-09-14 Website advice only. Not surveying or legal advice. Drafted with AI help and reviewed by Pat before publishing. (https://harveyrupert.com/how-we-use-ai/) We build and run sites like this for surveyors. https://harveyrupert.com/