Reasons to Use Contact Forms
Posted on April 17, 2008 by
Adie 
Web Development 
2 Comments
Every web owner wants their site visitors to contact them when they have any questions or clarifications about the website. The easiest way is to put your e-mail address on your website. When visitors click on this address, the user’s e-mail program (usually Outlook) will instantly pop up to send an email. Anyone can conveniently send you an email through this. However, there are two disadvantages namely:
· Spam – your email address will inevitably be seen by spambots which will result to a deluge of spam that you will inevitably have to deal with.
· Incomplete information – even if you can control the subject line and even retrieve the sender’s email address, you usually won’t get enough information such as the sender’s phone number which enables you to give help immediately.
So what is a better alternative to providing your email on the website? A lot of web owners have realized the benefits of online forms. These forms provide better security and more relevant information from the sender. You can ask the sender for answer specific fields so you can get complete information from him. Some of the latest version of these contact forms gives you the necessary protection against spambots and hackers.
· Unseen configuration – today, online forms can conceal personal information such as your email address. It also has a configuration structure that cannot be seen from the browser interface.
· Field Verification – this prevents hackers from tying characters that provoke errors. Field verification should be accompanied by the program from the server instead of the program from the client (for example, using JavaScript on visitor’s browser).
· CAPTCHA – this is the graphic challenge wherein the sender needs to verify that they are human. This forces people to look into each of the online forms they fill out; it succeeds in deterring hackers in most cases.
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I just added a new contact form to my http://www.ShirleySpeaks.com blog, and it works like a charm, so you’re right on point about field verification, captcha, etc.
Before adding the form, I used one that was unsecured,which yielded lots of spam (and still does).
What you suggest may seem small to some, but it guarantees big results and no garbage in your in-box.
I use Secure Contact wordpress plugin to add contact form for some of my blogs ;-)