contact form.
I don’t need a contact form, I’ll just add my email address on the website –
Absolutely, adding your email address to the site is fine. However, a properly constructed contact form has several advantages because it looks more professional and allows you to ask preemptive questions for specific information that you need. It helps to prevent spam (see below), and it’s perfect for anyone who wants to keep their contact information private.
In most cases where you are offering a service, you will want your customers to be in touch and so, for the most part, your whole website will guide people to this page.
How does it help with spamSpam refers to unwanted and unsolicited email which is sent to you, often automatically? –
Displaying your email address on your website makes it easy for spidersSoftware programs that scan websites. Sometimes for legitimate reasons and sometimes not to capture it and add it to lists for spammers so a contact form will hide your address.
Those same spiders now fill in contact forms to send spam that way. So we protect the form with something called a CAPTCHA. We’ll add all of this for you.
What if I want to ask people for specific information like a date of birth or a second phone number? –
No problem at all. A contact form can have any number of fieldsA field is a box on a form that I type stuff into that you want included. The fields are structured to ask for all sorts of information like emails, dates, phone numbers and drop-down selections etc.
*an example form from a client’s website