Archive for January, 2008

Will FormSmarts Remain Free?

A few people asked if FormSmarts will remain free. Although we may some day offer FormSmarts as commercial service with SLA and additional features, the basic service will remain free.

Note that we will need to charge a one-off fee for some services. For example, we will soon allow users to upload a custom website logo to appear on their web forms. Each image will require human validation, so we’ll need to charge a small fee for this. We will however lift the fee for users who have referred friends/site visitors to FormSmarts, wrote reviews about us on relevant sites, posted a video about using FormSmarts on Youtube, etc.

Show a Form Owner Name on Your Forms

Increase user confidence by letting us verify you own the websites you are using with FormSmarts. FormSmarts will then display a verified form owner name in the top-right corner of all your forms.

To verify your sites, sign in to FormSmarts, and choose the Verified Websites option in the Settings tab. The form owner name can currently only be a verified web hostname. We will soon also support verified personal or company names. More details here.

Are Forms Protected by a CAPTCHA?

CAPTCHA challenge image 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 every time 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.

New FormSmarts Features to Come in 2008

Here are some of the major features we’ll be adding to FormSmarts
during 2008.

Verified Form Owner

Web form users are often concerned about what the form results recipient is going to do with their personal information. As a first step in a series of efforts to help increase user confidence and trust, we’ll introduce a Verified Form Owner scheme.

When the feature becomes available, you’ll have the option to verify your domain name, personal name, or company name. That name will then be used as the form owner name, and will appear in a prominent place at the top of each form. Indications that the form owner has been verified will also be shown.

At the most basic level, verifying your domain name will only take a few minutes.

Customizable Form Appearance

We’ll be offering the ability to change the FormSmarts logo on your forms by your own logo.

More Field Types Supported

We’ll add support form more HTML form field types, like drop down menus (HTML select tag), in the first quarter of 2008.

Want More?

Send a feature request.

About the Form Builder Blog

The Online Form Builder Blog is published by FormSmarts, a web form service providing all you need to create a form and publish it online in minutes. FormSmarts makes it easy to build a form and embed it on your site. You can then get form submissions by email or store them on FormSmarts and download an Excel report. Learn more about the many other benefits of FormSmarts.