The contact form is one of the most important parts of your conference or event website (or any website).
Many people will not click the support button, the help button, or any other button if they run into a problem with event registration, your site, or any online property. They head right for the contact page (which I do because I can be a putz).
Because this is an online truth, it pays to have a great contact form that allows you to drill down and get to the heart of the matter so that your attendee, member or customer can reach the people they need to reach quickly and easily.
If you are not on WordPress, I recommend FormStack; this is a highly customizable form-building tool that allows you to drop HTML code onto any webpage and have an amazing form that is good enough to handle basic contact info and robust enough to work as a simple event registration tool. We use FormStack on many sites that we run and that we manage for clients.
FormStack handles if/then and conditional formatting and is very inexpensive for most users, with plans starting at about $20.00 per month (they are raising prices lately, which is a bummer; they are almost out of my wheelhouse)
If you are on the WordPress Platform, here are four options for building the perfect contact form; all are free unless noted.
Contact Form 7 allows multiple contact forms on a single site. All forms are customizable and support CAPTCHA and Akismet for spam filtering.
Contact Buddy is a simple form-building tool that allows you to capture names, emails, subjects, and messages on pages, posts, and in the sidebar.
A customizable contact form that lets your attendees and customers send you an email. The form blocks automated spammers.
Gravity is the Mack Daddy of WordPress form building and is very similar to FormStack in the types of forms that users can create. It also costs a little bit of money (from $39.00 – $199.00) but may be worth a few dollars based on your needs.
The forms by Gravity Forms are spectacular and can include the following features:
- Multi-Page Forms
- Pricing Fields
- Pricing Fields
- Text area
- Character Counter
- CSS Ready Classes
- Default Notification
- Post Field Enhancements
- Checkbox and Multiple Choice (Radio Button) HTML Support
- Shortcode Support
- Enhanced Bulk Edit Functionality
- Hooks and Filters
- PayPal Add-On
- User Registration
There you have it. Now go out there and get a good contact form so that people can reach your conference or event staff effectively, quickly, and easily.
