Nobody likes to be on the receiving end when it comes to spam. Our email spam filters catch a lot of the crud to keep our inboxes clean and clear of the phishing attempts, unwelcomed offers, and repetitive robo-call style messages. But what protects our web forms from being clogged with irrelevant and erroneous submissions that have nothing to do with our business?
There are options out there to help stop the stream of spam that is infiltrating your website’s entries, and they are relatively simple to implement. No web developer necessary! You only need a few pieces of information and a couple of minutes to safeguard your forms:
If you’re using our favorite WordPress form builder, Gravity Forms, this quick tip will save you the stress of combing through spam to find genuine communications from your customers!
reCAPTCHA is a free service from Google that helps protect websites from spam and abuse. A “CAPTCHA” is a turing test to tell human and bots apart. It is easy for humans to solve, but hard for “bots” and other malicious software to figure out. By adding reCAPTCHA to a site, you can block automated software while helping your welcome users to enter with ease.
It may seem easier to avoid spam by simply not having contact forms for your website, but forms are a crucial piece to your marketing. As a best practice, we insist that every website should have forms throughout your website to connect with customers and capture data. Here are a few ways you can incorporate forms into your site:
Don’t let the threat of spam dissuade you from including forms on your website! These capture opportunities are invaluable to the process of retargeting and remarketing to keep customers coming back to your site and shop. Preventing spam with reCAPTCHA isn’t an infallible solution to spam, but the value you’ll get out of using forms will vastly outweigh the few spam submissions that land in your inbox.
Keep your forms simple! The more fields you require, the less likely a website visitor is to complete and submit the form. Try to match the complexity of the form to the value it gives to the customer. Ask for the person’s name and email address, and only the other relevant information you need to follow up with them. Additional fields are fine, too, but don’t require them unless you have to. This gives people the option to share only as much as they feel comfortable sharing.
Explore more of our training sessions to learn more about website marketing and using forms.
While there are plenty of form builder plugins for WordPress, Gravity Forms is definitely our favorite. It’s a popular choice on many of the top WordPress websites, too, and we can see why:
Gravity Forms is as confident as we are that you’ll absolutely love what they’re offering. And with a 30-Day Risk Free Guarantee, you have a whole month to see for yourself! What are you waiting for?
Get a digital advantage delivered to your inbox weekly
