Posts Tagged ‘form submission’
Personalize the Confirmation Message Shown After a Form Submission
You can now personalize the confirmation message that is displayed after every successful form submission.
To personalize the confirmation message for a form, visit the Forms tab of your account, and edit the form’s details. This feature is only available to FormSmarts Pro users.
Important note: All default messages shown during form submission are localized. If you change the confirmation message, users will see your personalized message instead of the default confirmation message in their own language.
You can always revert to the default confirmation message by erasing the text in the Personalized Message box.
We welcome your comments about this new feature.
Posted on April 11th, 2009 in form builder.
1 Comment »
Tags: form submission, international, pro
Why Does Submitting a Form Require Two Steps?
Many form processors let visitors submit a form in only one step: users fill in the form, and are done after pressing the submit button. With FormSmarts, there is an extra confirmation step, during which users are invited to review and confirm the information submitted. There are two strong reasons why we added the confirmation step.
The first reason is quality. FormSmarts is typically used for transaction where the information submitted is important. Important because the information collected is intended to be read by humans, rather than machines. Important because this information is often intended to be acted upon.
By allowing users to review and modify their submission, we increase the accuracy of the information you get in the end.
Form users understand that, and it increases their confidence that you value the information they are sending you. Most of times, confirmation will only add a few seconds to the whole transaction.
The second reason is security and usability. Many form submissions are automated, or even manual spamming attempts, known as form spam or comment spam.
When a user presses the submit button, a lot more happens on the server than you may suspect. If we spot a likely spamming attempt, we’ll ask the user to complete one or more tests (e.g. CAPTCHA test) on the confirmation page. But in the same time, the bulk of users will never be asked to waste time on a CAPTCHA test.
Posted on April 23rd, 2008 in form handler.
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Tags: captcha, form handler, form spam, form submission, usability
Form Processor Upgrade: More Interactivity for Web Form Users and More
We’ll be upgrading at the end of the week some key components of FormSmarts. The changes will affect both form users and form owners.
More Interactivity for Web Form Users
- form users can modify any invalid data they may have submitted in the same page, rather than having to press the back button
- form users can modify submitted data even when form data is not cached by the browser, or if JavaScript is disabled
- we’ve added features to improve the experience of visually-impaired users equipped with screenreaders
Changes in Email Notification of Form Results
- new email subject format [Form #123] My Form Name #456
- the first part [Form #123] is fixed so that you can use it to create a filter within your mail client
- emails now include a unique transaction ID, e.g. #456 that can be used, for example, as an order number for order forms (form users are shown the transaction ID on the confirmation page)
- whenever your form contains an email field, you can now reply to sender hitting the reply button in your email client
- because of the previous point, we no longer show your pass-phrase in every email
Posted on April 15th, 2008 in form handler.
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Tags: email notification, form submission, web forms
Are Forms Protected by a CAPTCHA?
We often get questions asking whether FormSmarts web forms are protected against automated submissions by a CAPTCHA. A CAPTCHA is a challenge-response test used to determine whether the user is human.
Yes, we do use CAPTCHA tests, but not everytime a form is submitted. Instead, the form handler decides each time whether or not to require a CAPTCHA test (and other verifications), based on unobtrusive analysis by our form spam blocker of the information submitted.
This saves time to every one, and reduces form abandonment.
Asking the user to complete a CAPTCHA test for every form submission affects form usability and accessibility.
Posted on January 11th, 2008 in form builder, form spam.
2 Comments »
Tags: captcha, form spam, form submission, usability, web forms
How Did Comment-Spammers Find My Blog?
Did you ever wonder how comment spammers discovered your blog?
Crawling the Web
One possibility is that the spammer sent out a bot to crawl the web from blog to blog. This requires some infrastructure, and is becoming less effective as more bloggers use some kind of comment spam protection mechanism.
Searching Google
It then becomes more effective for the spammer to simply use Google,
searching for all the pages with the phrase post a comment, but without the terms sign in, register, log in, etc.
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22post+a+comment%22
+-intext%3A%22login%22+-intext%3A%22log+in%22+-intext%3A%22register%22
+-intext%3A%22sign+in%22+-intext%3A%22signin%22+-intext%3A%22sign+up%22
+-intext%3A%22signup%22+-intext%3A%22logged+in
And as an additional benefit, blogs come already sorted by “importance” in the seach results.
Extending the query to restrict results to blogs not using Captchas is left as an exercise to the reader.
What This Means to You
Avoid standard phrases like post a comment on your blog. More creative phrases like Reply to this Post, share your views or letters to the editor may be safer.
Posted on December 12th, 2007 in form spam.
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Tags: comment spam, form spam, form submission
