Posts Tagged ‘howto’

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New Web Form Creator Demo Video Available

We’ve added a new demonstration video to help new FormSmarts users get started. The video is on YouTube, and a higher quality version is available for download form the Internet Archive.

Tips for Web Form Users with Non-English Language Websites

Many users in non-English speaking countries now use FormSmarts, so we thought we would post a few recommendations for them.

When building your forms with the form creator, use the text data type for any fields that may contain non-English characters, such as the accented characters found in many European languages (All data types now support all languages/character sets).
Note that non-European languages like Arabic, Chinese, Hebrew, Japanese and Russian are not supported at this time.

As you know, FormSmarts form handler is not a simple form to email processor script like FormMail. Each and every web form submission is analyzed in real time, and the user may be asked to complete a challenge if we suspect a form spam attempt. Although anyone capable of reading elementary English should be able to understand what is expected from him/her in that context, this is something you may have to take into account when designing your web forms. You could for example warn users in the form filling instructions.

If you need help, we provide limited support in French, German, and Chinese (as well as English, of course.) You can write us in any of those languages, but we will only reply in English.

Creating a Simple Contact Form with FormSmarts: Watch the Video

If you are here wondering how long it would take you to build a fully functional contact form with FormSmarts, get the video from Youtube.

It’s a user-contributed video (thanks Dan), so don’t expect professional making and voiceover. If you can do better, let us know.

Choosing a Good Web Form Title

Most visitors will notice that they are submitting a form not from your website, but from FormSmarts.com. For users to be confident they are sending information to the right person, include your name or website name in the form title.

For example, “Contact Edgar Poe” is a more informative and useful title than “Contact Form”.

Adding Form Filling Instructions to Your Web Forms

You can specify Form Filling Instructions for your web forms. Although this field is optional, we encourage you to make use of it. It will help your visitors complete the form more efficiently, and also help you build trust with them. Here are some information you may want to place in the Form Filling Instructions.

Remind users of the purpose of the form to avoid people submitting the wrong form.

Precise the intended content of particular fields. This will help your visitors complete the form accurately and efficiently.

State for which purposes you will use the data submitted, and whether the data will be shared with a third party. This is particularly important if you collect email addresses and other personally identifying information. People are often concerned about their privacy when submitting forms, so having a clear privacy policy will help build trust with your users.

Include the name of your website, so visitors can be confident they are contacting the right person or organization.

Whenever relevant, give an estimated response time, e.g. “we normally reply within 2 working days”.

Links & Formatting

You may insert links in the form filling instructions and add basic formatting with this wiki-like syntax.

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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.