Is your website’s email form working hard enough?

How hard is your website’s email form working for you? Your website in general, especially communication devices such as email forms, should be designed to make your life easier. This blog gives some ideas of what your email form should be able to do for you so that you can be sure your email forms are working hard for you.

Security and form validation

Email forms, although a powerful way to communicate, can present serious security threats to your website and any non-public information contained in your directories and databases. Malicious users are able to manipulate your website by inserting programming scripts into the input fields of a form that are later executed on the landing page.

At this point, they are able to alter the appearance of your website, place spamming links, redirect visitors to an entirely different website, and more. Form validation prevents code execution by disallowing unnecessary characters in inappropriate input fields. For example, characters such as <, /, and >, should never appear in a user’s name. If the input field does not accept these characters, code cannot be executed.

Form validation generally ensures that you receive all of the information that you are requesting and verifies that the information was entered with the correct format. A date looks like a date, an address looks like an address, etc. Users who do not enter information correctly can be directed to the area or areas with problems to correct the problem before continuing.

Submission

After your customer submits the form, take the information that they provided you and personalize the landing page.

Thank you Angela Brown, we have received your service request at 1234 Happy Street. A technician will contact you shortly!

Reassure the customer that the order is being processed by emailing him or her a copy of the transaction details for record keeping. You can use the email to thank them for their inquiry, specify who will be contacting them and when, provide any additional information, etc.

You could email a technician a service request with as little or as much of the information in the submitted form as needed or you can have it publish a blog of a client testimonial by email. With the power of PHP, there are many ways to make website forms easier and more efficient for you and your client.

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