Contact methods for your website and reducing spam
In this article you'll learn about the benefits and limitations of various popular contact methods used on websites as well as tips for reducing the amount of spam (unsolicited email) they attract.
Contact forms
Description: This is the most popular of all contact methods. Contact forms are placed directly onto webpages and generally consist of at least two text input boxes - a standard single line text box used for entering the sender's email address and a multi-line text area box for the message itself. The form's submit button is then linked to a small program running on your website's server (usually called a CGI script). The CGI script processes the contact form's data, sending it to your email address.Advantages: Contact forms are considered highly convenient for website visitors due to their integration directly into a webpage itself.
Limitations: Visitors may accidentally enter their reply email address incorrectly, so replies you send may not successfully arrive. Another limitation is that not all website hosting accounts have capabilities for accepting such form submissions. Some visitors will still prefer contacting you using other means, therefore, still making alternative addresses available is recommended.
Spam Prevention Trick: It is highly unlikely that you will receive spam directly through contact forms. However, your email address to which messages are sent is still usually contained in your webpage's HTML code, which can be "harvested" by programs that scour the Internet looking for email addresses to add to mass-mailing lists without your permission. You can help prevent this from occurring by coding your email address directly into the CGI script itself. Many free form-mailing CGI scripts available to download online let you re-program the underlying code using the BestAddress HTML Editor or even a simple text editor. Even without any prior programming experience, most people will be able to do this quite easily as these CGI scripts are often well commented.
Listing email addresses
Description: Simply listing contact email addresses on a designated "contact" webpage is still very popular, and should therefore always be done regardless of any other method used. Email addresses can also be converted to clickable hyperlinks by adding mailto: followed by your email address in a hyperlink.Advantage: Because visitors to your website need to send email using their own email client software, email sent to you is likely to have a valid reply address, as opposed to contact forms where mistakes can easily be made.
Limitations: This method requires more work from visitors than would otherwise be the case using contact forms. Listing your email address openly also increases the risk of spam.
Spam Prevention Trick: Listing email addresses often attracts high amounts of spam, because the addresses can easily be "harvested" (as explained earlier). Help to reduce the risk by placing your email address on your website as an image file. Because spam harvesting software is usually unable to read text contained in images, your address is unlikely to be picked up. You should note, however, that using this method also results in legitimate screen reading software being unable to pick up your address. In addition, your email address will also not appear if the image for some other reason fails to load.
Forums
Description: Forums provide a means for visitors on your website to discuss topics publicly, as an online community. Free forum software can be downloaded off the Internet for use in your website.Advantages: Forums help build online communities on your website and encourage visitors to return.
Limitations: The main problem with forums is low participation rates - hundreds of people may visit a forum each day to read discussions, but very few will actively participate. Forums should never be used as the only communications method, since people often want to contact you directly without their question being visible to everyone.
Spam Prevention Tricks: Forums are unlikely to receive mass-mailed spam, but occasionally, participants may manually post "advertising" related material. Whilst you can usually delete these, an alternative approach is to moderate the forum. On moderated forums, new posts are placed into queue for your review before messages are published.
Live chat
Description: Live chatting technology has been available for some time in the form of online chatting software. However, its use directly on websites is still relatively new, and not yet widely used. This method provides instant communication capabilities between you and website visitors. Generally, live chatting systems are text-based. However, some more advanced systems can also handle voice communications/conferences provided that high speed Internet connections are involved.Advantages: Due to the immediate nature of the conversations, these systems are proving increasingly popular with some website visitors.
Limitations: Other communication methods still tend to be considered more appropriate. Live chatting systems are resource intensive to run and maintain. For most communication purposes, their true value is questionable. Most organisations still opt for improving other more popular communication methods, such as increasing response times for responding to email.
Listing offline contact details
Description: Providing offline contact details such as a postal address and telephone numbers should still be used where appropriate.Advantages: Some people feel more comfortable speaking to someone on the phone or writing a letter than using electronic communication methods.
Limitations: In the case of personal websites, posting your address and phone number is not recommended for privacy reasons. For business websites, encouraging customers to use electronic communication methods rather than using the phone is not only more cost effective, but many customers feel comfortable reading email in their own time.
