Evening/morning all

I'm in the process of putting my website together and have the bones of it done, now I'm contemplating installing a Contact Us/Enquiry Form and I'm sitting here with a blank mind. What fields would you recommend including in a form like this?

So far I have

Name:
Business Name:
Business URL? (perhaps? or is that being to presumptious?)
Comments field:

Would appreciate any help/advice/assistance you can share.

Regards
Mandy

Phone number so you can call them, and also their email address. Best to have at least 2 points of contact in case one doesn't work.

Be aware that as your site becomes easily visible online you'll get spammers too. So adding a field where there is a definite answer that needs to be given, for example: what is 1 + 1? They have to put the number 2 in the answer which means unless they're actually reading the form instead of using automated software, it should help prevent most spam.

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Kathie M. Thomas, VA Coach
A Clayton's Secretary, VA Blog

Good suggestion Kathie I have a contact form on my website and hadn't thought of that for the spammers....thanks for the tip

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Deb Frawley
Gem's Virtual Office

I like to include "tell us how you found us" but don't make it mandatory.

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Brianna Young, VA and Graphic Artist
www.virtualsolutionsadmin.com
"It's not the piano that makes beautiful music. It's the person sitting AT the piano!"

The code Kathie is referring to is called a 'captcha' or 'captcha image' and it's easy to find numerous free snippets you can add to your form just by searching for that term.

I think you've got everything covered!

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Thank you so much you are all stars!!!! Worth your weight in gold!

Wow Tess and Kathy - Thanks for the heads up for spammers.

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Be Well,
Carla
www.bwellbusinessservices.com
virtually meeting your needs

For those of you who have your email address published directly on your site - go to this thread for a link to a bit of code Hamid wrote to help 'encode' your email on the site so the spambots don't recognize and harvest it.

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Originally Posted by Tess

For those of you who have your email address published directly on your site - go to this thread for a link to a bit of code Hamid wrote to help 'encode' your email on the site so the spambots don't recognize and harvest it.

Too late for me, my email address has been on display for years. Every man and his dog has it. But I have effective spam filters in place so that helps.

However, this will be handy for some of my clients so thanks for sharing it Tess!

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Kathie M. Thomas, VA Coach
A Clayton's Secretary, VA Blog

I love Hamid's little handy tool!! Thanks Hamid!! For making life easy for us not so technical minded

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Winslow Girl Virtual Assistant
www.winslowgirlva.com
Taking Virtual Assistance to the Next Level

Thanks for the info Tess, will need to get that on my site ASAP

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Dawn Riley
A Virtual Assistant in Paradise
Our business is about making yours better

im doing my site with wordpress so im sure i could find something that would work in the captcha aspect.

Originally Posted by Tess

The code Kathie is referring to is called a 'captcha' or 'captcha image' and it's easy to find numerous free snippets you can add to your form just by searching for that term. I think you've got everything covered!

This is very valuable information! I do have a question, however.... How do I know which Programming Environment plugin to download? I think mine is Java, but I'm not 100% sure....

Thanks!!

Yes, you'll want to search for a captcha that is compatible with whatever your site is coded in (PHP is a very common option) - I'd be curious if your whole site was actually in Java though...but in any case, if you don't know what your site is based on you'll want to either ask the person who built it for you or you could ask your hosting company.

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You guys are great - I have not actually published my website yet - but I will be adding this into my contact page form. This site is so helpful! Thanks!