Test Your Contact Forms Often
- June 09, 2018
- Bradley Taylor
This week I was looking for a new landscaping company to cut and trim my grass. I went to a couple of their websites and filled out the contact form then clicked “send”. What happened next is why I am writing this blog.
The forms (on two different sites) returned an error page which meant that they was broken. It made me think, “how long have these forms been broken and how much business have these companies lost because of this?”. Personally, I try to test the contact forms a few times a month for each one of my clients. But, if you are a business owner, you should test it weekly. Think about if you never got that big client that you currently have. That would be infuriating.
WHY they break
Contact forms break when something changes within the website itself. Usually, and most commonly, a plug-in is at fault. They will either fail to install properly, need reconfiguration or the programmer simply published a faulty plug-in. Either way it can cost you business.
ALWAYS
Have an email address on the contact page. Have a message that says something along the lines of “If the contact form fails, please email us: btaylor (at) olympusweb.com
Try not to put the actual link to your email or it will get harvested by a spider and you WILL get spammed by robots.
