Contact Form Vs Contact Email Address

[Jack1102]

What advantages does a contact form have, over a contact email address/link (which takes you to a blank email ready to for you to type an send?)

Always confused me this one!

 

[Jack Dunn]

What advantages does a contact form have, over a contact email address/link (which takes you to a blank email ready to for you to type an send?)

Always confused me this one!

In my opinion the contact form that you fill in a few boxes on the actual website is often quicker and easier..

I often get emails from clients doing a bit of research or with general enquires and you can set it up to include the info you need , like a contact number etc that you dont always include in a regular email.

I prefer to use these myself when emailing someone about their services.

I guess we all have our own preferences...

 

[Ruth Mills]

At a guess...

(1) You don't need an email client (e.g. Outlook, Thunderbird, etc) to be installed on your computer and configured with a valid email address in order to send an email to the website owner.

(2) You can configure the email contact form to take extra fields as well as just the message - which could then be validated if required, e.g. if you wanted to make sure that clients emailing you had to leave a contact number for example... in which case you would add a mandatory field for the contact number that they would have to fill in before the message would be sent.

(3) Any emails sent via the contact form could also be archived in a database, in case there was ever any issue with them reaching their required destination (e.g. Hotmail has an issue where if a non-Microsoft IP address is used to send an email where the sender has a Hotmail, MSN, live.com, etc, email address - then the Hotmail server will return a "success" code to the outgoing mail server, but will then junk the message as spam, so the recipient never receives it at their Hotmail account - so I always recommend that people don't use a Hotmail address to receive email from a web contact form).

 

[smooth]

Ruth always gives fab answers! Just from my experience though, if I receive an e-mail from someone it always has their entire query on so you can give an indepth reply. When users generally fill in my contact form, they're not always filled in as well as they try to shorten everything. Some also put incorrect e-mail addresses in too so it comes from the server but you can never reply to it.

I'm having my site re-developed again and on my contact form this time I have put an asterix next to pretty much every field, included a drop down menu to enable the user to highlight their topic of interest and in certain ones this then generates another section. For example if they are enquiring over training they then have to state their occupation.

I've also added that box that you have to type the required information in as it appears in the box. This stops you receiving spam mail as far as I understand.

 

[Ruth Mills]

Ruth always gives fab answers! Just from my experience though, if I receive an e-mail from someone it always has their entire query on so you can give an indepth reply. When users generally fill in my contact form, they're not always filled in as well as they try to shorten everything. Some also put incorrect e-mail addresses in too so it comes from the server but you can never reply to it.

I'm having my site re-developed again and on my contact form this time I have put an asterix next to pretty much every field, included a drop down menu to enable the user to highlight their topic of interest and in certain ones this then generates another section. For example if they are enquiring over training they then have to state their occupation.

I've also added that box that you have to type the required information in as it appears in the box. This stops you receiving spam mail as far as I understand.

Yep, drop-down menus are useful too, especially where it's just a fixed range of answers (although you could always have an "Other" option which then automatically fires some Javascript when selected to reveal an additional text box where the "Other" answer has to be entered).

And the anti-spam box thing where you have to enter the text that appears in the image above is called a CAPTCHA - the easiest one to integrate with a website is probably ReCAPTCHA - reCAPTCHA: Stop Spam, Read Books - although the alternative audio samples that you can listen to instead if you are blind or whatever always sound like gobbledegook to me... I'd never be able to decipher what the person was supposedly saying!

 

[Ruth Mills]

Ruth always gives fab answers! Just from my experience though, if I receive an e-mail from someone it always has their entire query on so you can give an indepth reply. When users generally fill in my contact form, they're not always filled in as well as they try to shorten everything. Some also put incorrect e-mail addresses in too so it comes from the server but you can never reply to it.

I'm having my site re-developed again and on my contact form this time I have put an asterix next to pretty much every field, included a drop down menu to enable the user to highlight their topic of interest and in certain ones this then generates another section. For example if they are enquiring over training they then have to state their occupation.

I've also added that box that you have to type the required information in as it appears in the box. This stops you receiving spam mail as far as I understand.

The invalid e-mail address issue is a tricky one... you could use a regular expression (regex) to ensure that the format of the email address is valid, e.g. How to Find or Validate an Email Address - but that won't catch typos in an otherwise valid email address, e.g. if someone entered [email protected] instead of salongeek.com for example.

The ability to enter a duff email address is probably the biggest drawback of email contact forms in my opinion... although having a mandatory phone number field would help in the case of genuine typos, I think - as then at least the site owner can try phoning the client up who left the message with the mis-typed email address (assuming their phone number was typed correctly)...

 

[TheBack&Beyond]

From a customer point of view however, I personally always send an email so I can refer back to what I sent in my sent items folder.

With the volume of mail I send and receive - I would never remember to check my inbox for a copy of a mail I sent, IYKWIM!

 

[smooth]

Yep, drop-down menus are useful too, especially where it's just a fixed range of answers (although you could always have an "Other" option which then automatically fires some Javascript when selected to reveal an additional text box where the "Other" answer has to be entered).

And the anti-spam box thing where you have to enter the text that appears in the image above is called a CAPTCHA - the easiest one to integrate with a website is probably ReCAPTCHA - reCAPTCHA: Stop Spam, Read Books - although the alternative audio samples that you can listen to instead if you are blind or whatever always sound like gobbledegook to me... I'd never be able to decipher what the person was supposedly saying!

Ah CAPTCHA that's it!!!