Issue 5, January 22, 1996

• The Marketing Potential of Web Site Forms

by Dr. Ralph F. Wilson

What's the difference between an on-line brochure and a truly interactive Web site? Using feedback forms effectively allows the Web surfer to respond, to ask questions, to request more information, and even to order a product.

Mailto

The most basic type of response device is the "mailto" feature, available in most second-generation Web browsers. When you click on a highlighted e-mail address, for example, a screen will pop up allowing you to send an e-mail message to that address. While this is worth including at the bottom of every page, it suffers from one basic weakness: potential customers only give you the information that occurs to them. Often they'll leave out a phone number which helps you follow up on the lead.

Forms

A much better approach is to design a form which asks for specific information. The customers that fill out forms on my Web sites usually include address, phone number, organization name, address -- in short, whatever I ask for, unless it is of an especially personal nature. These forms are useful for:

• Prospect lists
• Subscription lists
• Customer surveys
• Simple product ordering
• Product questions
• Improvement suggestions

The list goes on and on.

HTML (Hypertext Markup Language, the language of Web pages) allows you quite a variety of ways to receive information:

• Multiple choice with one possible choice
• Multiple choice with more than one choice
• Fill-in-the-blank
• Drop-down lists which can allow for single or multiple choices
• Large boxes for extended comments

You can specify a default answer or leave the area blank, whichever you desire. If you were a teacher, you could easily administer on-line tests with these tools.

Customer Survey Example

Let's say you want to test the response of potential on-line customers to a particular product offering. You offer a free item as an incentive to fill out the form. Now you've got name, address, and e-mail address. You can ask demographic questions, types of purchase they make, and opinion questions, such as: "If offered for $19.95, would you purchase this type of product?" "How likely are you to purchase on-line?" You get the idea.

An example of a rather thorough form can be found at http://techweb.cmp.com:80/techweb/iw/docs/qualcard.html where the inducement is a free subscription to Information Age magazine. I don't doubt that the personal data you give them is sold to companies who specialize in highly-targeted lists. If you were to include a box at the bottom of your form which says, "Would you like to receive notice of new product releases in the future?" you can develop an e-mail list of your own. (You don't want to send unsolicited e-mail, known as "spamming," or you'll turn off potential customers.)

Of course, there is no way for you to verify the data. Nor can you select a true random sample for a scientific marketing survey. But you can poll the ideas of the kinds of people who come to your Web site. Here is a wonderful and inexpensive vehicle for on-line market research.

Order Forms

Standard forms can also be used for simple ordering, asking for such things as name, address, phone number, quantity, items desired, credit card information, etc. This can work quite well for Web sites that offer a limited number products, especially where customers purchase single items.

To see a good example of this type of order form, take a look at The Management Advantage (http://www.management-advantage.com/tma/), which sells human resource management books and tools. The only variable is quantity.

But let's say you're selling shoes on-line. (Surely someone is doing that already!). Perhaps this is how you'd take an order (though items would be in a single horizontal line on your page):

• Quantity - a fill-in box
• Style - a pop-up list of the various styles you offer
• Size - Either a fill-in blank or a pop-up list
• Color - Another pop-up list

While this can work okay, you can probably already begin to anticipate the problems:

• The customer has to remember the style name from a previous page where the shoe is described, since the order form is seldom on the same page as the product description.
• Let's say the customer wants one pair of black and one pair of brown shoes of the same style? Now you need a "Special instructions" box so your customer can order in ways your order form doesn't allow for.

The answer to this ordering dilemma is found in "shopping cart" software which allows shopping on separate pages, and supports totals, taxes, shipping, etc. (We'll discuss shopping cart software in Web Marketing Today a few weeks from now.)

What Makes the Form Work?

Forms are only helpful if they send you an e-mail message (or create a file on your computer). To do this, your Web page designer chooses a software program (called a CGI script) which resides on your Internet Service Provider's host computer. When your customer clicks on the "submit" button at the bottom of the form, this CGI program takes the information, formats it as an e-mail message, and mails it to whomever you designate. On my Web site, I usually have it send the e-mail both to me and the customer, and include contact information and a short plug for my business at the bottom of the message. You know: Market! Market! Market!

You may have guessed by now that setting up forms to work with CGI scripts is beyond the ability of the average HTML hacker. You'll probably need some help to do this right, not only to set up the CGI script, but also to integrate the form with an Internet-friendly marketing strategy.

Uses for Forms

As you can probably imagine by now, forms can be used in a great variety of ways, both to take information from your potential customer as well as to send information to your customer. On my clients' Web sites I use a program which enables three discrete uses of forms:

• Receive formatted information from the customer for feedback, ordering, surveys, etc.
• Subscribe on-line to an e-mail newsletter (like the one you are reading)
• Send out articles and information by e-mail

To subscribe to a newsletter, I ask the customer to put an e-mail address in a box and press the "submit" button (now renamed to read "subscribe me"). This is set up to send a one-line e-mail message to the mailing list program (e.g., majordomo) to subscribe that individual.

Order forms, articles, price lists, and other information can also be sent out on demand. The customer places an e-mail address in the box, and the CGI program automatically mails a text file to that e-mail address given. This can be used as an inexpensive "FAX-back" or autoresponder device. The distribution cost is practically nil, and your customers now have your information in a form they can easily print out for reference or action (such as faxing an order to you).

Ordering, surveying, subscribing, providing information .... Forms can be extremely powerful business tools when used creatively. Don't build a Web site without at least one!

(The Web site packages I offer to my customers include one on-line form for packages 6 pages and larger. Additional forms on one of my clients' Web sites can be added for a set-up charge of about $55 in addition to any per-page costs.)

Would You Do Me a Favor?

If you think the information contained in Web Marketing Today would be helpful for a friend or business associate, would you forward this issue to them right now using the "file/mail document" feature on the top menu-line of your Web browser? They'll appreciate your thoughtfulness and so will I. Thank you. Ralph