Once you’ve created your blog, you need a way for your readers to get in touch with you. Whether it’s to give you feedback, ask you questions about something you recently posted, or to get in touch with you about possible advertising opportunities, having a contact us form is one of the most important pieces to having a fully functional blog. It may even be the most important piece besides the blog platform itself. Now this brings up the question, how do I create a contact us form?
Before taking you through the process of creating a contact us form, there are a few things that you should keep in mind:
- Contact us forms must work
- This goes without saying but some things need to be said. Make sure your contact us form is fully functional. Check all of the text boxes, drop downs, check boxes, links, and most importantly make sure the submit button works. You will not believe how many contact us forms I’ve come across that have broken submission buttons. This is very frustrating from the user standpoint so make sure it works!
- Contact us forms must look good
- You may not think it’s important to make sure the contact form looks good but it does play a role in who decides to contact you. Think of your contact us form as a restaurant. If you went into a restaurant and the decor was off and not very welcoming, would you want to have a seat or just leave? Now this would be a different story if you went into the same restaurant and the decor made you feel warm and bubbly. Just keep in mind that people won’t want to establish a relationship with you if your contact form doesn’t look good.
- Contact us forms must have a CAPTCHA
- A contact form is kind of like a double edge sword, you create a form so your readers can contact you and you then become a target for spammers. The best way to ward off spammers is to have a contact us form that requires a Captcha before you can submit. This is by far the best way to prevent spammers from flooding your inbox.
How to create a contact us form
Creating a contact us form is as simple as creating a new page on your blog. Whether you’re using WordPress, Blogspot, or another blog platform as long as you have the ability to insert HTML code, you can create a form. There are a number of tools and plugins that you can use to create a contact form. Some are free and some are paid but my personal favorite is the ContactMe.com contact management system because it’s simple and easy to use. I’ll take you through the process of setting up a ContactMe contact us form.
- Create an account on www.contactme.com
- Sign in and click on “Add-Ons”
- Click “Add new form”
- From there, you can create your form by editing the “Manage Form Fields” section and adding your own questions. Also, make sure that you check the box that reads “Add Captcha Spam Protection” to protect against spammers. Click “Save Form” when done.
- Now that you’ve created your form, you can get the code by clicking “Get Code” and copy the code to embed the form. It should start with <iframe src=
- Take this piece of code ad paste it onto a new page within your blogging platform. Click save and you now have a functional contact us form.
ContactMe has two ways that you can read your form submissions. One option is to have the submissions sent directly to your inbox. The other option is to log into your ContactMe account and click on “Reports” and select “Submissions”. This will show you the form submissions you received.
Final Statement
ContactMe is not the only contact us form that you can use. There are a ton of options out there and it’s almost overwhelming the number of tools that are available. Here are a few lists that I found that may give you a head start:
- WordPress Tools/Plugins
- 20 free contact form plugins for WordPress by Six Revisions
- 125 + WordPress Contact Form Plugins by Designrazzi
- Other Tools
