Contact Forms

Form validation

2010-07-22T06:47:00.000-07:00

In a previous article, I've put form validation the first in the list of "what every contact form should have". Today I am gonna talk about this a little more, because I feel many people do not understand the real value of form validation.

Form validation is obtained using special created scripts, that take the input values and compare them with the expected input format (an email address, a numeric value, an alphanumeric string, a valid date, a valid time etc). There are 2 categories of form validation scripts: client-side scripts (usually JavaScript) and server-side (PHP, ASP etc). They both have advantages and disadvantages. JavaScript form validation is very powerful, but it becomes useless if the visitor's browser has JavaScript disabled. Server-side form validation usually needs the page to be reloaded for the validation to take place, but it can be considered more reliable.

There are many form validation options, each having its own usage. For example, if you run a hotel, and you want to let your customers reserve rooms using your website, you probably have a contact form that asks for a name, a valid email, a valid phone number, a valid check-in date, a valid check-out date, and maybe other fields. If your form does not have form validation, and your customers enters, by mistake, an invalid email and an invalid phone number, you won't be able to contact the customer to confirm the reservation, so you'll probably lose money! This is why you must use form validation, and make sure your visitors enter the expected data in your form's fields.

All the major online form generators offer form validation. I recommend you 123ContactForm form validation, especially if you need advanced form validation, ie: alpha (only letters), alphanumeric (only letters and numbers), alphaspace (letters and spaces), alphanumericspace (letters, numbers, spaces), numeric, numericplus (numbers plus .+-).

Secure online forms

2010-07-14T04:17:00.000-07:00

When your site uses only simple web forms, consisting of fields like Name, Email, Subject, you don't have reasons to think of using secure forms. But when you create advanced web forms, that require sensitive data from customers, you should consider using secure online forms.

Secure online forms are exactly like regular web forms, but the the entire form content (fields and entered data) is encrypted. Usually, this is done using a SSL certificate, which is installed on the server that hosts the forms. After installing the SSL certificate, your visitors can access the forms through the HTTPS protocol, and they can be confident that the data they enter in the forms will be seen only by the form owner.

Installing a SSL certificate is not an easy task, and usually requires assistance from your hosting company. Also, SSL certificates have to be bought, and they cost from $25 to $500, depending on various options and settings you wish to use. This is why it is much easier to use remote secure online forms, created with 3rd party form processors. While there are a lot of options out there, let me show you the best three I found: 123ContactForm offers secure order forms if you choose the $19.95 Platinum plan; Wufoo offers SSL encryption starting with the $29.95 Bona Fide plan; FormStack offers SSL forms starting with the $14 Starter plan.

Email autoresponders

2010-07-06T01:28:00.000-07:00

One of the most important features when it comes to contact forms is autoresponders. They are very useful if you want to automatically send a "thank-you" message to the form submitter, or even sensitive data, like a download link. Autoresponders make the communication process much easier, because they are sent automatically, and not after a couple of hours, which would probably be the case if you manually reply all form submissions, and you have a wealthy business.

For example, if you write and sell ebooks, and you get your orders using a Paypal order form , you can focus on your main activity - writing books -, and let your autoresponder do "the dirty job" of sending the download links. This will also make your customers very happy, because they will be able to use the ebook within minutes.

Another important aspect of web form autoresponders is the possibility to personalize the autoresponders. For example, an email that begins with "Hello Mike," makes a better impression to your customers then an email that begins with "Hello,". This can be achieved if the autoresponder script knows how to handle custom variables, and use them to generate the personalized autoresponders.

123ContactForm offers a nice web form autoresponder script, Wufoo also does, but names it confirmation email.

Feedback button on side of the page

2010-06-21T06:45:00.000-07:00

Lately, it became very popular to have a feedback (or contact) button on the side of the page. Located left or right, it looks very nice, and lets the visitor easily send an email to the site owners. With this in mind, 123ContactForm created a new feature, that allows their users to use their forms in conjunction with a nice feedback button. Below is a screenshot, I also recommend you to learn how to customize the Feedback button on side of the page.

Cool Form of the Week (4)

2010-02-27T08:34:00.000-08:00

This week's cool form shows that you don't need fancy effects to make the contact form embed nice in your site. Just use the same fonts and colors, and you get a nice form.

Cool Form of the Week (3)

2010-02-04T00:33:00.000-08:00

This week's cool form is the contact form of Bert Timmermans

Cool Form of the Week (2)

2010-01-25T05:20:00.000-08:00

This week's cool form is the contact form of Alexey Chenisov. It's like sending him a letter or postcard, and it is embedded perfectly in his website.

Cool Form of the Week

2010-01-15T03:58:00.000-08:00

When I began this blog, I showed you contact forms with serious usability and functionality problems. Now, I decided to start a series of posts called Cool Form of the Week

This week's cool form is the contact form of Created 201 Studios.

123ContactForm WordPress plugin

2010-01-07T10:33:00.000-08:00

The well-known form builder 123ContactForm announced, by Twitter, that they released a WordPress plugin which allows the easy integration of forms created by 123ContactForm with WordPress-driven blogs.

Adding a form to the blog requires just 2 easy steps:
- installing the plugin
- adding a short code to the blog post where the form should appear

I see that the 123 Contact Form plugin for WordPress also has a live demo, in a post on the 123ContactForm blog.

Best free contact form generator

2009-12-28T07:34:00.000-08:00

A user that is mad at the latest Emailmeform news asked me to tell him the best Emailmeform alternative. So I decided to create a short list with the pros and cons of the best free contact form generators on the market. They are in alphabetical order.

123ContactForm
Pros: Lots of features, including Captcha, form autoresponder, html form templates; no limit of form submissions.
Cons: no file uploads, form cannot be used in iFrame.

FormSite
Pros: Lots of features, including skip / branch functionality, html form templates, file uploading.
Cons: limited to 100 submissions, Captcha not available.

FormSpring
Pros: Lots of features, including Likert scales, multi-column layout, reports.
Cons: limited to 50 sumbissions, no file uploads, Captcha not available.

Wufoo
Pros: Lots of features, including predefined forms, html form templates, Likert scales, Captcha.
Cons: limited to 100 submissions, no file uploads.

This is a quick review of the main contact form generators: 123ContactForm, FormSite, FormSpring, Wufoo. They are not limited to contact forms, you can create a wide variety of forms with all these 4 services. If you need advanced features, every service has advanced service plans, that require a monthly fee, which will remove the limitations, and offer extra features, like Paypal order forms, Google Checkout integration, and so on.

Which one do you prefer?

myContactForm review

2009-12-12T04:11:00.000-08:00

I've seen a lot of comments about myContactForm, some of them positive, others negative, so I decided to test their form generator, and see how it works. I find the site's layout a bit oldish, but this is not very important, as what I dont' like others might like very much :) Maybe getting a new layout (how EmailMeForm did) would boost their business. But let's go to the functionality of myContactForm.

The first thing that surprised me was the long wizard that you must use to create a simple form. It requires 14 (?!) steps. Another thing was that you are required to enter a page where to redirect the user after the submission. What if I ask my friends by email to fill this form, and I don't have a "thank you" page? This should be optional, in my opinion.

I liked the way they let you customize the form layout - a lot of settings, you can even alternate the background color of the form questions. This would be even nicer with a real-time preview... It's nice that you can easily customize the error messages, received by the user if the form is not entirely filled, or the email address is invalid. Surprisingly, using Captcha is not an option for Free users, but only for Premium users ($29.99/year). The Premium membership is cheap, but the features list is quite poor compared to the competition. I am sure their features list offers enough to create simple forms, but nowadays the top form generators offer awesome features like Paypal order forms or multi-page forms.

That's all, I would say myContactForm has potential, but it is not developed enough to offer the same things as other sites in this niche.

123ContactForm blog

2009-11-18T09:38:00.000-08:00

You probably know 123ContactForm, one of the best contact form generators. The news is that they started their own blog, because they want to interact better with the customers, and create tutorials about html forms easier.

Wufoo announces pagination

2009-11-15T12:54:00.000-08:00

It seems that Wufoo is preparing a nice feature, pagination. Especially for big forms, this makes the form submission seem easier. I believe this requires a lot of modifications to their engine, so I can't wait to test the feature (after it is officially released to the public), but knowing Wufoo, it will work very well :)

Emailmeform...

2009-10-29T12:29:00.000-07:00

I know EmailMeForm for a couple of years. At some point, I created an account with them, to see what their services have to offer. At that time, it was one of the best contact form generators out there. But time has passed, and they are not doing well in this hard competition. Wufoo has a lot of new features, FormSite also, 123ContactForm announces a couple of new features every month. And EmailMeForm, who has a new layout and a new owner, remains with the same old features...
Quite disapointing, I would say...

Formdesk is funny :)

2009-10-14T08:14:00.000-07:00

Browsing the web, doing some research on contact forms, my hobby, I found (by a Google Ad) another form creator: Formdesk. Looking at their features and pricing, I found the "We create your form" link, in their menu. Curious young man as I am, I wanted to see how much would it cost if they create your form. The simplest form possible, 2 fields (Name and Email, for example), no calculations, no dependencies.

OMG OMG OMG! €200 for such a form ?! Indeed, Formdesk is funny :)

What every contact form should have

2009-09-28T04:33:00.000-07:00

Nowadays, contact form generators can build complex contact forms, with tons of features, some of them useful, some of them just to be there when counting the features :) I thought it would be nice to make a list of the features that, in my opinion, must exist behind every contact form out there. So, here it is:

data validation - how can you reply to a visitor that did not enter his email or telephone number correctly ?!
anti-spam defence, captcha being the first choice - shall I explain why ? :)
autoresponder - because it lets the form submitter know when you will answer, or whether you are on vacation or not. you can give your telephone number, so that the form submitter can call you if his problem is urgent

Of course, some forms require more complex features (file upload, Paypal integration etc), but I was talking about the normal contact forms.

123ContactForm.com now offers Paypal integration

2009-09-24T09:10:00.000-07:00

Starting today, the forms created with 123ContactForm.com can benefit of a new feature: Paypal payment integration. This way, collecting money from the visitors becomes a piece of cake.

Subscription payments supported, various languages and currencies also supported. More details here. A nice presentation of this new feature in the video below...

Useless features for contact forms

2009-09-21T02:45:00.000-07:00

We all agree contact forms are a powerful way of communication between the site owner and the visitors. This is why the site owners use contact forms with interesting features: file upload, field validation, multiple recipients, autoresponders, price calculations etc. But, in my opinion, there are some features that make the contact form hard to use, and sometimes make it totally unusable.

For example, in the contact form from the below image, you will see that the users can add tables to the contact form, increase and decrease the indent, and even use different headings. Who needs all of those, in the first contact between the visitor and the site owner? And if this is not enough, look what happened when I selected "Sub Heading"! Nice error, huh? Keep it simple, stupid.

How to ruin your own contact form

2009-09-20T01:18:00.000-07:00

While browsing the web, I found this contact form on a Blogspot blog. If you zoom the picture, you will see that the 2 buttons of the form have no text :) Very professional and appealing, huh? If you click on the buttons, you will see that they have some text (Submit & Reset), but it is written with white font on white background.

Of course, as a Sherlock Holmes fan, I wanted to find what is causing this, because I am sure the blog owner did not intend to make this mistake. Looking to the source of the page, I found that he is using some Blogger template, which contains a lot of CSS. After just a couple of seconds, I found the cause of the problem:

input, button, textarea, select {
font: normal 12px/12px "Trebuchet Ms", arial, sans-serif;
color:#ffffff;
vertical-align: middle;
}

In fact, this affects all the other buttons on the blog (search button, subscribe button etc).

And to draw a conclusion of this post, always verify the usability of your site after you set a new template for it, because it is very possible to get problems like the one I've just talked you about.

A short Kontactr review

2009-09-05T06:42:00.000-07:00

Well, I've heard of Kontactr plenty of times, but I never had the time to take a look at it. Today, I decided to create an account and test-drive Kontactr.

Long story short, the contact form created with their site is usable, delivers the emails correctly, but it has very little configuration, which makes it not suitable for bigger websites. You can use just the default fields (Name, Email, Subject, Message), not even a tiny dropdown list or checkbox is availble... If you think of more advanced features, like file uploads, export to CSS, autoresponder, templates, which are common on today's best contact form generators, the conclusion is clear: Kontactr is just for newbee webmasters, who are satisfied by the simplest contact form, and do not need professional contact forms.

Shall I also say it includes an ad in the form submissions, that you receive by mail? Quite disappointing...

Character encoding

2009-08-21T03:35:00.000-07:00

All web pages have problems when it comes to displaying special characters, specific to some languages. Forms are no exception, that means the forms must be prepared to accept the characters that are more likely to be used by visitors (Greek characters if you have a blog in Greek, Dutch characters for Dutch blogs and so on... you understand the point). This is why you should select the optimum character encoding for your blog. You can read about selecting the best character encoding for your blog / form by visiting this resource.

Advertising Request

2009-07-30T10:22:00.000-07:00

Why use contact forms

2009-07-30T09:19:00.000-07:00

Contact forms are the most efficient way of communicating between the webmaster and the visitors. They are very popular because they look nice and make sure that the webmaster gets the most important details about the visitor: name, email, telephone or address maybe.

Another important reason of using contact forms is that the webmaster's email address is not disclosed anymore, like in regular mailto: links. This eliminates spam, and why all know how important is to keep the Inbox spam-free.

On this blog, we will discuss various issues regarding contact forms and create some sample forms.