A form serves several purposes
Your visitor can send you a message without knowing your email address. Moreover, the visitor does not need to open an email program to write you something.
If you declare the field where the visitor's email should be entered as a mandatory field, then the visitor is forced to enter an email there. However, if he wants to remain anonymous, he can simply enter 123@abc.com, i.e. a text that contains everything that an email must contain, if he does not want to name his email. Of course you can't reply then.
You can solicit opinions with a form by providing elements for the visitor to click on.
You can easily get feedback from your visitors, since the threshold to fill out a form is lower than writing a direct email.
So a form is a great way to interact with your visitors.
How does a form work?
A visitor fills in fields. These can be text fields where you can write one line, text fields where you can write as much text as you want, radio buttons where you select one of several options or checkboxes where you can make more than one choice.
As soon as the visitor is ready, he clicks on a button, which you can label freely, and when all the mandatory fields are filled in, the content of the form is submitted and the visitor gets a message if it was successful.
Our system sends the message directly to the email you requested. Either to the email with which you are registered with us or to the email that you have stored in the content element. The message will not be saved by us, but will be sent directly and without detours via your page. So you should take care that the email that is deposited does not simply delete unwanted emails, but "parks" them in a spam folder so that you can check there in case of doubt whether there is a system message from and. Received messages from your contact forms you should save if it is necessary, because there is no storage by us.
In order to know from which contact form the message comes, if you use several forms, you can give a name to each content element, which will be included in the message from our system.
If you want to reply to the message from the contact form, it is recommended to open a new email, copy and paste the email address from the message and, if necessary, copy the content from the message you want to reply to as well. If you reply directly to the message sent by us, a new email will open, but the following problems may occur:
Your email program enters our system email as the recipient. In this case the message is not sent to the author but to our system and since this is an email address that is not used by humans, the system deletes your message without comment.
In the message sent by our system there is all the information you need to know what the visitor has done. This means that it contains the names of the individual fields and a lot of information that is intended only for you. It does not make a good impression if you send such an email to the person who made the request. We recommend that you do not reply directly to our system message, but actually create a new email for the reply in order to keep control over what you ultimately send.
Safety from spam
Many websites use a so-called captcha with their contact forms to make sure that a real person fills out the form. Depending on the system used, it can be quite annoying for the visitor. We use a special technique to prevent spammers from abusing our contact forms and have had very good experiences with it so far. So you shouldn't worry just because our forms don't offer an option to include a captcha.
How do I design a good form?
In our experience, it makes sense to just take paper and pen and sketch out all the elements you need and make a template of what the finished form should look like. It's also best to mark all the fields that should be mandatory.
You have the following elements at your disposal
Single-line input fields. For emails, names, addresses etc.
Multiline input fields. For comments and the like. Note: For single and multiline input fields the same element is used.
So called comboboxes (dropdown menus) where you can create any number of elements and the visitor can then select an entry. For the possibility to vote on something and the like.
So called radio boxes. Same function as combo boxes, except that the entries appear as a list and in front of each entry is a checkbox. Only one entry can be marked here. Radio boxes have round checkboxes.
Checkboxes. Like radioboxes, you can create as many entries as you want. However, the visitor can mark as many entries as he likes together. Control boxes have square checkboxes. For the possibility of making multiple requests and the like.
Other elements. For designing you can insert headings and lines. Where a heading can be formatted as a label as well as a heading. It makes sense to insert longer texts between input fields, which look like a label in terms of font and font size. There is also a spacing element, so that you are able to insert space between the input elements and the text elements as you like.
Default text. For some field types there is an input field for a default text. With this you can make sure that if the input field is empty, there is a hint text that is automatically overwritten when the visitor fills in the field. For example, in a field where the visitor is supposed to enter an email, you could enter as default text "Please enter your email here...". The default text will always appear in the font color you specified for the input field, but lightened so that it is recognizable that this text is only a placeholder. A default text is not mandatory. You can leave this field empty.
Mandatory field. If you want visitors to make certain entries or fill out certain input fields, then you mark the input field as mandatory. This has several effects. Firstly, an asterisk is placed behind the label. This tells the visitor that this is a required field. If you want to give some help, you can write a small text under the contact form like: "The fields marked with an "*" or "asterisk" are mandatory fields and must be filled in for the form to be submitted" or something similar. On the other hand, this marking ensures that our system checks whether a field marked as mandatory is empty. If it is, the submission process will not be executed and the mandatory field(s) that are empty will be marked.
Think about what you want to achieve with the form. Do you want your visitor to rate your site? Just leave a comment, participate in a survey or order something informally? For each case you need different fields. Put yourself in the shoes of your visitor. What would you voluntarily disclose (name, age, address, email, gender, etc.) and what do you really need from the visitor? The fewer mandatory fields there are, the more visitors may be willing to use the form. So you always have to distinguish between usefulness and necessity. If you want or need to respond to an entry, then you need either an email or a phone number. If the visitor wants to buy something from you, you need his complete data so that you can respond.
If you know exactly what your form looks like, you will be able to create it very quickly.