The most basic method of interacting through a website is a form. We have all used forms on websites and they allow users to ‘submit’ information to the website owner. Such submission forms can perform a number of functions for your business:
- a “Contact Us” mechanism for general enquiries;
- to gather customer requirements so a quote can be issued;
- to complete a survey;
- to join a mailing list;
- as a simple booking system where basic information like dates and number of rooms can be gathered to book a bed & breakfast.
Submission forms can be designed to collect a vast array of information. This means they can be extremely useful for encouraging customer interaction. A more advanced form can even handle tasks such as:
- offering an upload facility (such as attaching a CV);
- acting as a purchase order for goods displayed on your site;
- providing a membership or subscription application;
- collecting of credit-card and debit-card details.
If you are going to collect personal information and especially if you want to use a form to collect payment card information you MUST place the form on secure web space so that the information is encrypted before it is sent to you (see Hosting Integration).
A form is good because it allows you to specify exactly what information you need from a customer. Compare this to an ad hoc email sent by a customer that may not contain any of the information you need to give them a quote or, worse, how to contact them!
Just because forms are ‘simple’ does not mean they are not very functional or attractive. They can often be the quickest and best way of collecting vital information from customers when they visit your site. You can also create 'mandatory fields' that the user must fill in to proceed.
However, forms do have limitations and the best example of this is to think of using a form to collect order information from a customer. If you have more than two or three products it will be hard to design a form that can automatically present all your products and the various product options (such as size and colour).
It is almost impossible to design a form that can automatically calculate the total value of an order; for that we need to look at shopping carts.