Email link V Forms

Which works the best?

[peewhy]

I personally think that visitors prefer to click on an email link and type a general message rather than filling out a form with never ending error messages because they didn't add a sex gender or evening telephone number ... and all they wanted was a price for a blue widget.

Has anyone tried both methods? Which generated the most enequiries?

[oilman]

>>because they didn't add a sex gender or evening telephone number

I find it depends on the form. All I ever ask for is name, email addy, and question/comment. I get quite good success with inquiries.

If you have a massive form that asks for all that extra junk (gender, age, income, phone number etc) you're probably going to see less use.

[peewhy]

Quite right, in reality there would be little or no difference between an online form and say OE.

Often webmasters go over the top my asking too many questions to a simple enquiry.

[ppg]

For my company's B2B site, we have various forms. They're not monsters, but they may be asking for too much info - name, address, e-mail, phone, company, position. They hardly ever get filled in and all the leads come via the mailto links.

I think I'll try stripping a couple of them down to name and email and see what happens.

I'm also thinking about trying a simple 'call me back' form which would just ask for name and phone no.

[SlowMove]

Forms are great where specific information is needed. It's good for link exchange requests where users will need to send title, description, URL, etc.

[marek]

I always use dual set up: a contact form and above them a sentence like "Contact us using the form below or email us at [e-mail]", where the email address is clickable. On all my web sites useres prefer the contact form. On some of them the ratio is closer -- 3:2 for the contact form -- on others it's quite high -- 5:1 for the form, or even higher.

[peewhy]

I think people think that if they ask for information, visitors will be happy to supply it ... wrong!

Imagine going into a shop and asking for a Mars Bar. "sure, what's your telephone number?"

Okay, there are certain enquiries which we need to ask specific questions in order to answer the query but at least let the visitor get through the door before netting him.

[jamesa]

Forms that ask for too much info really make me angry :) That being said I've had good luck with contact forms where the fields are just From, To (pulldown menu), Subject and Message. Just like email.

Advantages: (1) Some people don't have their browser set up properly to launch their default email program so this covers them, (2) losing the mailto link on your site will help minimize spam.

[TravelSite]

Forms are much better in my opinion. Clients never include enough info when left to it themselves! It also allows you to discourage those that aren't really that interested in your product/service (by making the essential fields compulsory).

[peewhy]

This is the balancing act.

You have a travel site and generally people are making enquiries about destinations or whatever, clearly you need certain information in order to supply accurate information on the first response instead of going back and asking them information which they failed to provide.

It is the 'data capture' information such as 'gender'. 'evening phone number', 'screen resolution' ... yest I've had that one!

I want the price of widgets not join your club! ... not you travelsite :) that was just a spontaneous rant.

[griz_fan]

A well thought out form is much better than a simple email link, IMHO. As mentioned earlier, some people's browsers aren't hooked up to a functioning email client and having your email address in a page invites spam. With a form, you can prompt people for the information you need to adequately respond to their request. In addition, with a form, you can pass in a bunch of extra info via hidden fields. For example, if you had a "having problems with your website" contact form, all the visitor has to fill in is their email address and comment field, but the hidden fields would capture referring URL, user agent, etc... Plus, with a form, you can easily process an auto response, log the contact to a text file or database table. Add a drop-down list to your contact form and you could then route the request to the person best able to deal with the issue/question.
Problem crop up when you ask for information not directly related to addressing the visitor's question. I find that our customers don't mind answering a few extra questions, as long as they directly apply to the purpose of the contact form. Asking for name, address, phone #, etc. will turn people off in most cases.
<rant>If you want to see an example of what I consider to be a really bad implementation of a form, root through the updated Best Buy site to find their contact form for website issues. Not only do they REQUIRE your phone number and other personal information, they only allow for something like 50 characters for the comment section.</rant>
So, I think forms are a better alternative than email links, but put some thought into the information you ask for, use hidden fields, and finally, be sure to reply promptly...

[TravelSite]

peewhy

First, no offence taken :)

Second, I don't know the answer to - "Which generated the most enequiries?". I'd suspect that it may be emails - but I'm not sure, people are getting used to using forms. Given a choice between 50 emails and 10 form-requests however (using a well laid out form) I'd take the form requests - conversion rates (for us) are much higher with forms...and our staff aren't wasting most of their time chasing up users for more details.

But I agree that emails are better in some situations. If I'm doing link exchanges the last thing I want to do is to fill out a form! Also, forms use more advanced technology (!) than simply showing your email addresses - and as such aren't quite as robust. On a competition page for a very specialist market segment we identified this, and switched to email :)

...and if they aren't showing the price of blue widgets up front I'd complain! :)

[marek]

IMHO both form and email link are necessary, if you really want to encourage feed back. Sometimes user can't send an email (he is not at his own computer, etc.) and sometimes he can't use the form (he is off-line, he has only printed page, etc.).

[vincevincevince]

To contact us:

Use our web form:

How we can contact you [....................] (email address, phone number, or postal address)
Your enquiry [................................]

Or email us at:

<mailto:>my@address

Or phone us:
+00 0123 456789

Or write to us at:

1 My Road, My Town, My County, My Country, MY-P OSTCODE

[SlowMove]

I think people think that if they ask for information, visitors will be happy to supply it ... wrong!

I gave up on thinking. I just do what works. Try responding to this without filling out a form :)

[peewhy]

There's forms and there's inquisitions at least this is as simple as OE.