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Discussion on: Fix your portfolio: Common issues I found reviewing your portfolio websites

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perpetual_education profile image
perpetual . education • Edited

It's quick. It's easy. Users don't have to leave your site, and they can't mess it up.
It always beats all other forms of contact.
Make sure you're using a contact form as your main form of communication.

Do you have any numbers on this? We usually find them cumbersome. Sometimes they don't seem like they work / and one time, we even had a client who's form was broken for 3 months (big problem). Maybe people just do them wrong... but - we get a lot more calls than form submissions. Just curious if there's any data you've found.

RE: Wide paragraphs are hard to read. AMEN! That's a clear sign of a dev-only developer. We've been playing with that ch unit lately for that.

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danspratling profile image
Dan Spratling • Edited

I don't have any numbers unfortunately. I tried googling it and all I found were form providers telling you why you should use forms - somewhat biased.

However, as a general rule of UX, you want to make contact as easy as possible, and you don't want users to leave your site.

I've typically found contact forms (when presented well, and without uneccessary barriers to entry) work better than other forms of contact.

I always present users with at least 2 options, so I never force them into one route.
Personal: contact form and email.
Business : contact form, email, telephone, sometimes a chatbot too.

I can't help you on form being broken for months. Maybe add some tests to make sure it's up and running more regularly than you would manually test it.

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perpetual_education profile image
perpetual . education • Edited

RE: broken form - we didn't build it. It was just something that was happening around the time we started working with them. The point being - that an email address can't really break - (but we've seen that too with people fiddling with the DNS and stuff!) (at least you'll get a message about the failure as a sender)

So many times there's a form - and you write up your thoughtful message, hit send - and then the page just goes "clunk" - and you wonder - if anyone ever got it.