Create Catchy Contact Forms Fast With VisitorContact

VisitorContactWhat methods do you provide for people to contact you through your web site? Generally, providing more ways for your visitors to contact you is better, but including everything on your site can get messy, and can also leave your details open to spammers. VisitorContact is a free service that makes it easy and fast to add a smart and stylish customizable contact form to your site. The form is accessed through a nonobtrusive yet noticeable button on the side of your web site and gives your visitors an easy way to get in touch with you though a variety of methods (through email, Twitter, Skype and more), yet also includes some spam protection.

After signing up, you have three options for adding the VisitorContact form to your site. The first is copying and pasting some generated JavaScript into your site’s code. When visitors click the button, they’ll receive the popup form as the next image shows.

Contact Form JavaScript

If you don’t want to use the JavaScript method, you can use an iframe. This just pastes the entire form into the page, without using the button.

The third and final method is a WordPress plugin that works like the JavaScript method, except you don’t have to copy and paste the code (Disclosure: WordPress is a product of Automattic, a company that is backed by True Ventures, a venture capital firm that is an investor in the parent company of this blog, Giga Omni Media. Om Malik, founder of Giga Omni Media, is also a venture partner at True Ventures). You just upload the plugin, activate it and enter the form ID provided by the VisitorContact web site.

As you can see in the image above, the contact form displays your basic contact information, address, Twitter and Skype IDs. You can choose to publish all or some of this information. If you include your address, the contact form displays a Google Map pointing out your location. You can customize the form using VisitorContact’s design options and change the background color, hover color and screen placement of the form to match your site’s theme.

VisitorContact also has an autoresponder option that will send an acknowledgment email to any visitor who uses your contact form. It’s an opportunity to connect, send a “thank you” gift, or simply let the sender know the form reached you.

You can edit your forms through VisitorContact’s simple dashboard, which also gives you access to the JavaScript embed codes  and the list of recent contacts (without email addresses).

VisitorContact dashboard

After your form has received 50 messages, you can export the data containing contact names and email addresses. Until you reach the magic number of 50, you can only view an online list with names, location and the form name.

When a visitor emails you through the form, you’ll receive a simple email complete with their details, including IP address, as the next screenshot shows:

Email from contact form

VisitorContact is a good option for quickly adding contact details to a site and works well, with one exception. If a visitor makes a mistake entering the spam-protecting CAPTCHA code, the contents of the form are wiped, meaning they’ll have to start over. I think the information in the form should stay put to avoid aggravating users.

How do you include contact information on your site?

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