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Our WordPress Contact Forms Plugin was built as a tool for creating your website forms to help you in your marketing efforts, from lead generation to customer retention. We just released version 1.1 and to celebrate we would like to share with you the following four tips that apply to all your website forms when considering to all parts of the marketing process.
It’s a constant battle with customers old and new, but let me state this clearly: publishing email addresses on the website indiscriminately is just plain bad.
Protect your emails from spam. Publishing email addresses on line opens them up to all those spam bots and email harvesters out there. So if you publish email addresses expect a large increase in unwanted emails.
Don’t use the “mailto:” link. Mailto clickable links do not always function correctly for the site visitor. My guess is that mailto will eventually get deprecated.
Contact Forms are easy enough to implement and can substitute the publishing of email addresses everywhere on a website. Forms can be made for each person on your team or every email address that would need to be on your website.
Name – Always ask for a name. People like to be called by their name. Consider asking for the “Full Name” or for the “First Name” and “Last Name”. One problem with the “Full Name” option is that it becomes difficult to know which is the first name and which is the last name. In many cases, such as when sending automated email messages, it is important to know the difference.
Email – Use all methods to make sure that this field is filled in correctly. Make this field mandatory and make sure that the syntax is correct before allowing a form to be submitted. Once the form is submitted, show the email in the thank you message and give the user the opportunity to correct it.
I have already written about success messages. Auto reply emails once the form is filled in are just as important.
To the visitor – don’t just give a clear signal that the form was filled in. Let the visitor know for sure that you have his correct email address by sending him a message right away.
To the persons responsible for answering – include all the information filled in and other important information like the time, the page the form was filled in, the referrer, the visitor IP address.
Make sure that you are storing all submitted data for future needs. It is important to have a tool that lets you track forms:
Individually – know how each form on your website is performing. Are you getting contacts from one particular type of page? or from a particular type of form?
As a whole – How is your website performing as a whole.
Just fill in the form and we will send you four more tips directly in your mailbox.
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