E-mail Address vs Contact Form

You want to make sure your website visitors can contact you, and you have made every effort to make sure they can find the “Contact Us” page, but what do you want to include on the page? Should you list your email addresses, have only a contact form, or provide both?

Both can potentially present security issues. An email address presented in text can be harvested by spam bots. A contact form can be hacked and used to send spam or gain access to the server. But both can be prevented with extra security measures. Furthermore, both can be setup to point to the same email account on your server.

The real advantage for contact forms is that you can customize them and lead users to provide certain information. This could help them formulate ideas and come up with better questions. You can also gain certain useful data from them that might help determine how best to assist them. Finally, a contact form script that collects statistical data can help you when it’s time to evaluate your website. Ideally, it is probably best to provide both options, just in case a user prefers one over the other.