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No, I Don't Want to Fill Out Your Contact Form

posted by hubie on Thursday May 09 2024, @02:26PM   Printer-friendly

owl writes:

https://adamjones.me/blog/dont-use-contact-forms/

Contact forms are almost always worse for users than just putting an email on your website. I explore why they're terrible, why you've done it anyway, and what to do about it.

Why your contact form sucks

Your contact form is completely broken

It's remarkable how many contact forms are just straight-up broken. A WordPress upgrade here, a change to your CRM there, and your contact form silently breaks.

At time of writing, B&Q's contact form just plainly doesn't work1. I am fairly amazed that a retailer with revenues in the billions doesn't notice written queries have stopped coming in.

[...] Contact forms are hard to get right, and often just a worse experience for everyone involved. Go forth and remove your contact form and list your email on your website now!

[Ed. comment: click through and read the lengthy, but hard to argue against, complaints about web-based contact forms]

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by YttriumOxide on Friday May 10 2024, @04:53AM (1 child)

    by YttriumOxide (1165) on Friday May 10 2024, @04:53AM (#1356411) Homepage

    My business website (self employed, just me, tech specific consultancy) has both a contact form and an email address.

    I find about 20% of my client inquiries come through the form, and 80% through email; while I get a lot of spam via the contact form and nearly none via email.

    Nevertheless, I leave the form there because clearly some people are choosing to use it, and I'm not in a position to risk temporarily losing 20% of my business on testing whether they would use the email link if the form were removed. Overall, I'm happy with having both options for my clients and other than the annoying spam which is easy enough to ignore, don't really see a downside.

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  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Friday May 10 2024, @01:27PM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Friday May 10 2024, @01:27PM (#1356443) Journal
    This is an important point. Multiple contact methods means you're more likely to get people to talk to you. I think the broken communication problem of the story would be greatly reduced, if websites routinely monitored their forms for basic functionality. But that would require some degree of interest in the communication provided by contact forms.