{"id":111,"date":"2010-03-03T17:46:12","date_gmt":"2010-03-03T22:46:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.acefest.com\/blog\/?p=111"},"modified":"2010-03-03T17:46:12","modified_gmt":"2010-03-03T22:46:12","slug":"the-contact-form-is-dead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.acefest.com\/blog\/2010\/the-contact-form-is-dead\/","title":{"rendered":"The Contact Form is Dead"},"content":{"rendered":"

May I be so blunt as to officially pronounce the contact form<\/strong> deceased? This may all be my perception but I usually have a good handle on these matters. As our submissions come in for this year’s Call for Entries, filmmakers <\/strong>often supply a website <\/strong>to learn more about them and\/or their project. Having visited countless websites of this nature, I’ve come to the decision that an e-mail address is far more appealing than a contact form<\/strong>.
\n
\nContact forms are a neat<\/strong>, streamlined <\/strong>and professional <\/strong>way to allow your website users<\/strong> to get in touch with you. But is it the best <\/em>way? I say no. I say they are cold as ice<\/strong>! I see a contact form and I run in the other direction. Had I wanted to ask that person a question or send a message of some kind, the desire escapes me immediately. Reasons being:<\/p>\n

1. I’ve somehow gotten it into my head that the recipient never receives or answers form submissions.
\n2. I’m scared to spend time filling out the form, only to find a page error waiting for me on the next page.
\n3. When individuals or small businesses use contact forms, it creates distance between you and your visitors.<\/p>\n

All of those reasons can be a major turn-off for your users. Most people implement the contact form in an effort to avoid spam<\/strong>. It’s 2010 – spam is smarter than your silly little contact form any day.<\/p>\n

My conclusion and whole-hearted recommendation to webmasters: list your e-mail address on your contact page<\/strong>. Use Gmail<\/a><\/strong> to avoid heavy spamming. This will prevent you from coming off as cold <\/strong>or unapproachable<\/strong>. Interaction <\/strong>with your user-base is priceless – don’t turn them away from it, encourage it!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

May I be so blunt as to officially pronounce the contact form deceased? This may all be my perception but I usually have a good handle on these matters. As our submissions come in for this year’s Call for Entries, filmmakers often supply a website to learn more about them and\/or their project. Having visited […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[146,144,143,147,145,106,83],"class_list":["post-111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","tag-communication","tag-contact","tag-email","tag-form","tag-interaction","tag-tips","tag-website"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.acefest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.acefest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.acefest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.acefest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.acefest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=111"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.acefest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":112,"href":"https:\/\/www.acefest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111\/revisions\/112"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.acefest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.acefest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.acefest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}