Contact Me Forms, Spam and Email.
Obviously, really really obviously, you want your customers to contact you from your web site.
This does however has it's pitfalls.
It's possible to post a thing called a mailto link. This looks like a normal web page link, in blue and underlined, but, when you click the link, your computer fires up it's email program and puts the email address in the 'to' field for the message. All clever stuff, and nice and simple for the browsing public.
Unfortunately this method has fallen prey to spammers. Spam is unwanted junk email. Why it is called Spam is beyond me. Spammers have automatic programs called spiders that sift through millions upon millions of web sites looking for the email address that's written into the web sites. When they find them the email is added to their list of addresses to recieve their unwanted email junk about investment opportunities and viagra, how welcome all that rubbish is every morning.
There are a couple of ways around this.
One is to use a 'contact me' form. This is a form that you can put on your web site for your interested prospective customer to fill in. You can customise the form to ensure that your customer gives their email address and can tick boxes related to the type of service they want, or anything really. Once filled in we write a small program that collates all the details, puts them in an email and sends it to your email address. The email address is however hidden from the dreaded spammers. This is by far the most satisfactory way to deal with customer contact. It does have it's disadvantages. Whilst browsing the Internet people (myself included) have a very short attention span, literally seconds. When confronted with a form people often can't be bothered to fill it in and so you loose your customer's contact.
Another workaround, the one we use, is to keep your email on site and just deal with the spam as it comes in. You need to get a program called a spam filter, we use zone alarm and it only lets through a few of the hundreds of spam messages you may get in a single day.
Another is to write a small file called a .htaccess file that blocks access to the spammers. This is a good hi tech method of dealing with spammers, but only works in certain areas.
Another simple method is to put your email address in a picture like this.
It all comes down to personal preference in the end.
This does however has it's pitfalls.
It's possible to post a thing called a mailto link. This looks like a normal web page link, in blue and underlined, but, when you click the link, your computer fires up it's email program and puts the email address in the 'to' field for the message. All clever stuff, and nice and simple for the browsing public.
Unfortunately this method has fallen prey to spammers. Spam is unwanted junk email. Why it is called Spam is beyond me. Spammers have automatic programs called spiders that sift through millions upon millions of web sites looking for the email address that's written into the web sites. When they find them the email is added to their list of addresses to recieve their unwanted email junk about investment opportunities and viagra, how welcome all that rubbish is every morning.
There are a couple of ways around this.
One is to use a 'contact me' form. This is a form that you can put on your web site for your interested prospective customer to fill in. You can customise the form to ensure that your customer gives their email address and can tick boxes related to the type of service they want, or anything really. Once filled in we write a small program that collates all the details, puts them in an email and sends it to your email address. The email address is however hidden from the dreaded spammers. This is by far the most satisfactory way to deal with customer contact. It does have it's disadvantages. Whilst browsing the Internet people (myself included) have a very short attention span, literally seconds. When confronted with a form people often can't be bothered to fill it in and so you loose your customer's contact.
Another workaround, the one we use, is to keep your email on site and just deal with the spam as it comes in. You need to get a program called a spam filter, we use zone alarm and it only lets through a few of the hundreds of spam messages you may get in a single day.
Another is to write a small file called a .htaccess file that blocks access to the spammers. This is a good hi tech method of dealing with spammers, but only works in certain areas.
Another simple method is to put your email address in a picture like this.
It all comes down to personal preference in the end.
Labels: contact me, email, spam
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