A contact form is a web-based form that you can find published on many websites. Any web visitor can fill out the form and submit it to send a message to the website owner.
Contact forms typically trigger email notifications to your inbox, allowing you to quickly receive messages from web visitors without exposing your email address to hackers and spammers.
What Is A Contact Form?
A contact form is a user input form that allows web or app users to submit messages for the website or app operator to view. It’s also a web form that users can use to send messages to the individual or business that runs the website.
Using contact forms is like sending emails, but you type your message directly on the website rather than using an email client.
How Does A Contact Form Work?
Let’s consider the primary processes involved during a web visitor’s interactions with contact forms. First, the website user fills out the form and clicks the submit button.
Clicking this button triggers form field validation on the visitor side; two things can happen. The visitor's entered data is validated successfully or fails validation.
Let’s assume the data fails validation; the website or app displays an error in red text below each failed field, indicating the reason for failure.
The user needs to fix the error and resend the contact form. This time, the data is validated successfully.
After form field validation, the server then conducts the final validation check. If any field fails, the web user receives an error message and must re-enter the correct information.
Yet if the validation process succeeds, they can proceed to the next steps. CAPTCHA validation to verify that the form user is human, not a computer, also occurs at this stage, as necessary.
While CAPTCHA is generally effective, it's important to stay informed about potential CAPTCHA cons to address any limitations associated with this crucial verification step.
The website sends an auto-response email to the visitor’s email address, usually through a no reply email. The visitor sees a ‘Thank You’ message that serves two purposes: it hides the contact form and acknowledges the visitor's interest.
Features Of A Good Contact Form
Many things make a good contact form, including ease of use. It seems obvious, but it’s often overlooked in contact forms. Sometimes, too much focus is put on the personal creative preferences of the web designer or business owner, rather than on the user.
While a contact form must meet your business needs, it must also be user-friendly. That means you should avoid jargon and keep the presentation practical.
A stellar contact form also asks only for essential information. You’ve probably encountered a contact form that asks for personal information you consider unnecessary, such as your mobile phone number and home address.
That may alienate some web visitors, causing them to abandon your site and increase your churn rates. Instead, ask only for the information you need from potential customers. Alternatively, you could include “optional” form fields that allow the user to decide how much information they wish to share.
Your contact form must have good functionality. Sounds obvious, right? However, how often have you completed a form only to realize it doesn’t work correctly?
For example, there might be a bug that doesn’t accept your email address, or one field may ask for information you don’t have.
You must test your contact forms frequently to ensure they work correctly. You never know when something might change in your mailer server or hosting environment, causing your forms to stop functioning correctly.
The Benefits Of Contact Forms
Publishing your email address on your site is a bad idea because spam bots regularly scrape email addresses from the web.
If a spam bot harvests your email address, it might end up on various spam mailing lists, creating significant security risks, ranging from phishing to fraudulent emails.
When you use contact forms, your business or personal email address is never displayed on your website, so scammers can't access it.
However, contact forms can’t prevent all spam. You can still receive some via contact forms on your site, but it’s pretty easy to tweak your forms to avoid it.
For instance, you can use CAPTCHA to verify that your web visitors are human.
Contact forms can also help you receive messages at your convenience. For example, most companies publish their phone number on their website alongside their postal contact information.
But what happens when a potential customer tries to call when you aren’t there to respond? If you don't have a contact form on your site, they might leave and go to your competitor’s. That’s why your site must have a contact form and a phone number. Click here to learn more about adding a contact page on WordPress!
