Technique Gallery - Online Contact Forms
Getting people to contact you is a large part of online marketing. If your product or service is complex (bigger than a tub of margarine) then most of your potential users will want to talk to someone before they lay their money down. This is human nature. But to make things a bit more challenging different people behave in different ways in different situations. Some people will want to wade in and 'get things done', others will want to play it cautious and 'gather information' before committing to anything. From a marketing point of view we want to do everything we can to ensure that everyone can choose how they want to start to get to know us. The web gives us the most options here and even better, all at once.
People want information and to do business on their terms
If I were to give you a phone call (during dinner of course) and say something like: "I have a really great car here, it is Red, Automatic, 4-Doors, Sporty, Late Model, Low Kms and in Great Condition for only $9,990 Drive Away*, would you like to buy it?" I am guessing you would say "No". But get this, even if you wanted exactly this car you would still most likely not give me your credit card deposit! Why not? Well it comes down to this: a car is a big purchase and you need time to come to grips with such a transaction. Best I could hope for is that you might just say, "Where is this magic car? And I'll come look at it on Saturday". Odds are you won't show up. This is why car salesmen no longer cold call and the internet is now becoming the number one tool in starting the search for a new car. People want information and to do business on their terms. The telephone in this situation does not allow enough options in getting information across to you and allowing you to decide how to proceed - somewhere on the scale of do nothing to run down the street with wads of hundreds in your outstretched hand screaming I gotta have it right now.
Contact Forms have given us another way of letting people choose
how they would like to start to interact with us
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This is my Ideal Contact Us page
Here I have given every possible way for people to chose to contact Roddy. A potential customer can; lob up at the shop, get on the phone, sent a fax, send a letter, bother Roddy whilst he's driving his car, send an email directly to Roddy himself, or play really hands off and use the lovely Contact Form Pluglet included in Create on the right. Short of throwing rocks at Roddy as he drives to work I can't see any other ways that someone might need to start to investigate getting one of Roddy's Machines. On the Form I have made Name and Contact Email mandatory because without these key bits of info Roddy can't get back to you. I have also kept the form short because while people love making long forms only lunatics like filling in long forms! I think nice and simple so I could type:
and Roddy will get that in an email and know I'm his kind customer and be right back to me. You will see that I didn't make phone number manadatory because form-fillers are often nervy types and don't really want to talk to me till they are ready so I won't force them on that. |
Contact Pages and SPAM
Many people will say that open email addresses should not be shown on the net as you will get swamped with Spam. Sadly not everyone who contacts us wants to buy something from us. Some want to sell us magic blue pills or show us movies of some lovely actress like Angelina (how kind of them). These contacts come from "bots" who find email addresses and forms on web sites and fill them in with garbage. While removing your actual email address does cut down on Spam it creates an impediment to users choosing which way they want to contact you. I am happy to cop a bit of Spam so as not to make it harder for someone to contact me (after all Outlook sorts most of it for me and sometimes I even learn things). Fixing Spam on forms is easier. You will see that at the bottom of the Contact Us form I have used Wiggly Words - officially known as Human Validation. This stops the bots from being able to submit the form as they can't read the images.
Contact Forms have given us another way of letting people choose how they would like to start to interact with us. If you have any questions or want some assistance with creating something like this for yourself please don't hesitate to contact one of us here at iSmart.
iSmart Software
* this is the most common request in car yards especially on a Saturday morning
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