

Why your contact form sucks - user24
http://www.puremango.co.uk/2011/07/your-contact-form-sucks/

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masklinn
* Why do you want my first and last name? Hell, why do you _mandate_ those? You don't need them and my email address is more than enough to reply.

* Provide a straight mailto link. Your contact form blows, your text boxes are not resizable if my browser does not provide an UI override I can't keep a full communication log on my side. When you reply in three weeks forgetting to quote half my query, there is no way I'm going to remember what I typed in your contact form.

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modernerd
> Why do you want my first and last name?

I ask for these on web forms simply because it's good to be able to reply to
people by name, instead of starting your response with "Hello" or, as is sadly
quite common, no greeting at all.

> I can't keep a full communication log on my side.

That bugs me too. I use a "receive a copy of this email" checkbox on my forms
for this reason.

~~~
masklinn
> I ask for these on web forms simply because it's good to be able to reply to
> people by name, instead of starting your response with "Hello" or, as is
> sadly quite common, no greeting at all.

Then 1. make it optional, not mandatory, I really don't care for being greeted
in an answer to one of my inquiries and "hello" more than suffices (nothing is
also perfectly acceptable).

And 2. Don't make it a pair of First, Last field. If I'm Her Majesty Elizabeth
the Second, by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and
Northern Ireland, and of Her other Realms and Territories, Queen, Head of the
Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith you'd better greet me as exactly that. On
a more serious notes, various cultures have different takes on names and
greetings, not everybody has a first and a last name (or only a first and a
last name). Just put "name" and I'll put what I want in that.

~~~
modernerd
Both excellent points.

> "hello" more than suffices (nothing is also perfectly acceptable).

To me -- as a receiver -- it feels impersonal to get a barked response without
a greeting, especially if I'm writing to a company or in a professional
context, and particularly if their answer seems canned. And, as a sender, it
feels uncomfortable starting without a short personal greeting (at least for
the first email you send). In the field of customer service, especially, you
need to convey that you've acknowledged the sender's unique concerns. Even
when they're far from unique.

Some interesting reading here in "Are greetings and salutations redundant in
an e-mail?": [http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/18396/are-
greetin...](http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/18396/are-greetings-
and-salutations-redundant-in-an-e-mail)

In case it ever crops up, addressing Her Majesty The Queen in written form as
'Madam' and closing with 'I have the honour to be, Madam, Your Majesty's
humble and obedient servant' is just fine.

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bostonvaulter2
Adding my name isn't enough to make automated replies sound personal.

~~~
masklinn
Exactly. If it's an automated reply it's going to sound impersonal either way,
and if it's not an automated reply... don't hire robots?

When the person who mails you is actually involved/interested, even a
greetings-less mail won't sound impersonal. When the person who mails you is
not a person, you probably won't get to make it personal. And in the worst
case, you may land it right in the uncanny valley.

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dasil003
> _The contact form for the White House has thirteen fields to fill out before
> the user gets to start the task they came there to do! Thirteen!_

Did it occur to the OA that making it easy to submit a message is not their
primary UX goal? How about encouraging thorough and complete responses so that
they actually can respond to the good messages instead of frustrating
thoughtful constituents who get drowned out by spam?

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jamiecurle
For at least a year and half now we've been working with clients to eliminate
their contact forms and give users an email address instead of a form.

From the perspective of the user this is preferable for a number of reasons.
Drafts can be saved, the message goes in their sent items, their name is
already set, their email address is correct but most of all because it allows
the user to write in the context that their used to writing in.

Clients obvious concern is spam and it is a problem as can be deciding who
gets the email ( support / customer service / accounts ) and we work these
issues out on a case by case basis. There is no silver bullet.

My stance on the issue, is that the primary aim (I assume) of the contact form
/ page is to get people to contact whoever lies behind it, it seems quite
absurd to make users jump through the hoops of a form in order to do so.

~~~
8ig8
It's not unusual for me to browse the web from my wife's iPad. An email link
doesn't work for me in that it requires me to use her account.

For a while I didn't have email set up on my iPhone, but I'd still often surf
the web. Again, I'd be out of luck with only an email link.

What about website visitors at public terminals like the library?

Without forms you're adding email as a dependency on the device to initiate
contact.

As always, the likelihood of those use cases is dependent on the audience of
the site, but I think a contact form should be available in most cases as a
last resort.

(Personally, I prefer a simple contact form in most cases. It keeps me on the
page without the delay of opening the mail client or the potential distraction
therein.)

~~~
jamiecurle
Good points you make and from this perspective it makes our approach a little
short sighted and ill advised.

Having a contact form as well an email address may be a more reasonable
default - I could have been pushing my own preference onto users and this is
obviously no good.

~~~
8ig8
As a web developer I find forms to be a pain for simple sites. They're a
moving part I'd rather not deal with.

Lately I've been pushing hosted forms like what Wufoo offers. Provide the
email address like you mentioned, but link or embed a simple Wufoo form.

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trb
It should be common design sense to think about what the users wants to
accomplish and how to help them achieve their goal faster. It would make a lot
of interfaces much more pleasant to use.

It doesn't take a lot of time. The html for a simple comment form takes me
more time to write than to think about what the user wants to do (tell me
something). I would even go so far as to not ask for anything besides the
email address for replies, and make that optional:

If you sign with your name, I can greet you. No matter what convention you
use. If you don't that's fine, too. Want me to call you? Write it in your
message.

Even if you didn't enter an email address, I still got whatever you had to
say, and who knows - your suggestion could be the one thing I've been missing
all along.

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BasDirks
Their own contact form (and entire website) contradicts the advice quite
demonstratively.

~~~
user24
You're right, but that doesn't make the advice any less valid.

It's my site, but it's just an off-the-shelf wordpress theme I'm using. What
do you think can be improved about the UI of the site, aside from the comments
form which I'll fix tonight?

~~~
BasDirks
Excellent response to (admittedly unconstructive) criticism, hats off :) Will
send you my humble suggestions after work.

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panabee
i couldn't agree more with the sentiments captured here. it's critical to help
users experience some satisfaction, to help them achieve their goal as quickly
as possible, without presenting tangential tasks. user patience is virtually
non-existent.

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huertanix
The fewer form fields the better. Name, email address, message, and Fifth
Element captcha are all I use on my personal website's contact form:
<http://davidhuerta.me/contact.php>

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thomasgerbe
You could probably get away with just:

Message, Name, E-mail

~~~
tintin
I think Message and E-mail will be enough. Most people write down 'kind
regards, name' in the message.

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ignifero
I believe contact forms are terrible by design: websites want you to contact
them only when you're desperate. Try contacting Paypal as an example.

OTOH, i seriously love the feedback form on Google+.

