If your blog encourages conversation, a contact form says “shut up!”
December 9th, 2008 |
Several times recently I have been frustrated by elaborate contact forms and registration procedures when trying to communicate with various bloggers. Are e-mail addresses really that precious? Is it that hard to auto-respond to an e-mail and respond to the legitimate ones later on?
So many companies use online communications not to connect with people, but to hide from them. Ever try to find eBay’s phone number? There used to be entire discussion groups devoted to finding it.
The most recent source of my discontent is Fast Company. I wanted to contact one of their bloggers, DJ Francis. I went to his profile and saw this:
When I clicked on “SEND A MESSAGE” I was taken to a log-in screen. I am already registered on Fast Company, but I wasn’t logged in and maybe the cookie wasn’t set right, but really, if I have to troubleshoot it in real-time, it’s not a conversation any more is it? It has degraded into one more annoying, time wasting experience with corporate indifference.
So whether you’re U-Haul or you have a blog devoted to Japanese art of the Heian period, lose the contact form and the registration process. It’s so 2000.
Tags: contact forms, blog registration
| Sphere This |
It’s definitely a show stopper for me - there was a long time when I wouldn’t comment on blogger blog posts because I wasn’t on blogger and didn’t have an account to log in with.
Comment by Mom On The Run — December 9, 2008 @ 7:46 pm
Boy do I agree with you!. What do I do, I stop doing business with them. It is as annoying as the recordings we have to go through to get to a real person on the phone with companies. Just a different format BLAH!
Comment by michele price — December 9, 2008 @ 11:46 pm
Sorry, I wouldn’t for one second consider losing a contact form. Using a mailto link on a publicly available page would mean losing my readers’ real email messages in the sea of spam that would flood my mailbox. Putting a mailto link on the Web is the equivalent of falling asleep face-down in the bath house.
Contact forms should be dead simple–email address, name and text, but IMO using a mailto link on your blog is a rookie error.
Completely agree, however, about registration to comment. Lame and unnecessary.
Comment by Sonia Simone — December 10, 2008 @ 10:19 am
Hi Joel,
I’m sorry to hear about your trouble reaching me! I agree - forms are totally not the way to go (it’s not the only gripe I have with the FC site). It’s lame and unnecessary.
I’ve since added my email address to my Vcard - which is pretty lame in itself. I never use them, but hey, it’s something. Plus, there was no field for email address in the Vcard area.
I also added my email address to my bio which I had to CODE IN HTML! For real?
This is all to say…this is why I include only blog post teasers on the FC site. Every post links back to my site where I have a prominent About page which does include an email address (http://onlinemarketerblog.com/about-2/) You’re right - it’s not tough and shouldn’t be treated like a state secret.
Anyway, thanks for caring (to read my stuff, to contact me, to post this article) and for advocating for sensible web transparency.
Cheers,
DJ Francis
OnlineMarketerBlog [at] gmail [dot] com
@MarketerBlog
Comment by DJ Francis — December 10, 2008 @ 10:25 am
I’m setting up my FC profile and it IS pretty lame… for one thing I’m supposed to maintain a separate blog there and promote it at my site? Fat chance! Happy to do it the other way around… where my feed updates automatically in the FC profile, but no such option.
DJ is a good one to follow on Twitter too… he’s http://twitter.com/MarketerBlog
Comment by red@b2bcommunications.com — December 10, 2008 @ 11:22 am
[...] advice these days, so here is yet another piece of sage wisdom: Know thy followers! I posted a rant yesterday about not being able to e-mail a blogger because of Fast Company’s onerous [...]
Pingback by socialized » Know thy followers! — December 10, 2008 @ 11:40 pm
Totally agree. When i am contacting people or companies about business opportunities or even just to say “Keep up the good work” if the contact form is more than just name, email, and message I bail. I hate the “what type of message is this” stuff. It’s a message read it. If you don’t want messages take the form down.
I won’t even go into the sites/blogs that have contact forms, and don’t reply. weak.
Comment by John Wilker — December 11, 2008 @ 1:24 pm