Make SPAM Con-Form
Many churches are guilty of putting one or multiple e-mail addresses as links on their web sites. You want people to be able to contact you right? Yes but…when you put an e-mail address on your web site it opens it up to a flood of SPAM. You see, there are a lot of unscrupulous people who have written programs called web-bots that troll around the Internet looking for e-mail addresses. They then scrape them off the sites, add them to a SPAM e-mail list/directory and then that address gets inundated with SPAM.
Church Contact Form
So what would be the solution? Today, a web site contact form is the best way to go. Forms are easy to create, easy to customize, and easy to manage. The key is to keep them simple. Forms without the proper “authentication” can also be subject to nasty SPAM. So, make sure your contact form has a human-validation component. There are many ways that contact forms can be added to a content management systems as plug-ins or programed into your site. It may cost a wee bit more in your site design but it will be best for everyone involved.
Format The User Experience
Not only does a contact form kill SPAM but it actually enhances the user experience. The final added benefit is that you can ensure that any required information that you might need is included in the form. No matter what, please keep the form as short, sweet, and simple as possible. Long forms with too many required fields frustrate people. Only ask for information you actually need to serve the request.
Want a sample of a contact form? See the contact form I have here on Marketing Integrity…
What are your thoughts on contact forms? Does you church have one? Should it?
Image from Flickr courtesy Matthew Oliphant
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