Should I Display an Email Address on My Site or Use a Contact Form?
Christopher Heng at thesitewizard.com writes an interesting article as to whether you should have a contact form on your website.Read article
I would add to this.
When I include an email address on a website, I do so using code which makes it harder for spammers to harvest the email address.
The inconvenience of not receiving all the relevant information from a customer when they send you an email (e.g. they forget to include a contact telephone number) is, in my opinion, much better than the problems which are often encountered with contact forms.
- A contact form sometimes just stops working....but you don't realise until a customer actually tells you...how many other customers were lost as they just clicked away onto another site?
- Your webhost may change parameters on the server to limit spam mail, but this may result in you receiving some but not all of the enquiries via your contact form. How can you check this...only by regularly sending yourself half a dozen test enquiries from your website and making sure you receive them all.
- Internet "bots" can hijack contact forms which are not well protected, they then use them to send spam emails to others....but it looks like it is coming from your site. You could get blacklisted. Again, you often have no idea that it is even happening.
- Internet "bots" can send spam to you via a contact form on your site which does not have proper validation on all the content entered.
My advice is to use contact forms when you need to collect specific information from potential customers but be aware of the problems I have mentioned above.
Call me if you have further questions about the contact form on your website.
Labels: contact form
posted by Gaynor Tilley @ 13:57
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