Good day everyone! Today, we’re trying something a bit different with our blog. Instead of offering up our regular tips, tricks, and personal opinions, I'll be walking you through how to implement your own Contact Us form on your store.
Something kinda like this:
Having a Contact Us form is a great advantage to your site because it allows your customers to easily send questions, comments and concerns your way.
As an aside, if you ever have any questions on how to use our system or want to add a fun feature to your store, but you’re not sure how to tackle it, drop us an email at support@shopster.comusing the subject line “BLOG Question". We’ll see if we can put together a bit of a blog walkthrough for you. Remember to be specific with your questions as we only have a page or so to reply.
Right then back to our little walkthrough:
Before we get to the actual implementation of the form, there are a few things you need to get sorted first:
1. If you don’t already have one, create a “Contact Us" page -This is where you'll be pasting in the code for your form. Follow these steps to create a contact us page:
1. Log into your Shopster account
2. Click the "Store" tab
3. Click "Store Pages"
4. Click "Add a Page"
5. For the Title field enter "Contact Us" (or something similar – it’s up to you)
6. For the URL Name field enter "contact-us". This is how your customers can get to your Contact Us page. So for example: http://storename.secure2cart.com/contact-us.htmlwould take you to the contact us page on your store.
7. Leave the content blank for now.
8. Click "Create Page"
2. You'll also need to create a second page that lets your customers know that their question has been submitted. Follow the steps above, but for the page title enter "Contact Form Submitted", and use the URL Name "email-submitted". In space provided for content, you will want to enter a brief but polite message letting your customers know that you appreciate their email. Remember to provide them with a timeframe for your response. "Thank you for your inquiry. We will respond within 1 business day" always works.
3. Make sure you have a professional email address to attach to your contact form. If you have your own custom domain name, you can create an email that uses this domain, for example support@mystore.com. You’ll want to contact your domain registrar to get help setting this piece up.
Once you have these three things setup, it's time to get to the good stuff: Creating your form! EmailMeForm is a great free service that lets you easily create a professional looking Contact Form without any HTML/Programming knowledge. While there are some upgrade options available, the free account is perfect for what you’re looking to do.
Create an EmailMeForm account, login, and click the "Create a New Form" link to flow through the easy form creation wizard. The first and most important step in the wizard asks you to provide the URL for the Thank you page you created in Step 2. Enter in the full URL as you see it in the address bar of your browser window. For example, http://storename.secure2cart.com/email-submitted.html. The rest of the steps in the EmailMeForm wizard revolve around how you wish to design the look and feel of your form, so play around to find out what works for you. Once you’ve worked your way through the wizard, you will be presented with the HTML code of the form. Copy it (right click on your mouse and select copy) and go to your Shopster account.
Back in your Shopster account, click the "Store" tab and select the "Store Pages" link. Go the Contact Us page you created in Step 1 - This is where you'll be putting in the HTML code for your form. Within the Content editor (the space provided for your content) click the "HTML" button.
This will pop up the HTML source editor screen. Paste in the HTML code you got from the EmailMeForm site. Click the "Update" button to close this window and then click "Save Page".
Now that you have the page properly created, you'll need to put it in your menu structure so it shows up on your store.
In your Shopster account click the "Store" tab and then click "Store Menus". Choose the menu you wish to have your contact page live in, for example the "Footer Menu" (note: you may find it valuable to display your contact us page in more that one menu – it’s more visible to visitors that way).
1. Under the Add Item heading, enter "Contact Us" in the Name text box
2. In the Link To dropdown box select "Page"
3. In the Select Page dropdown box select your "Contact Us" page
4. Click "Add Item".
5. If you want to change the order of your menu items, click and drag the [+] on any of the items to rearrange them.
6. Once you've added your Contact Us page to your Menu and positioned it appropriately, click "Save Menu".
TADA! You now have a Contact form for customers.
Before you get too excited, go to your store and test your newly created form to make sure everything looks just right and is working correctly. You can go back to your EmailMeForm account any time to edit the form in case you need to make any adjustments.
amazing stuff
Posted by: LINKBUILDING | January 25, 2010 at 12:10 PM
Creating a web form online with a form builder is more convenient than downloading the software,
Posted by: formchamp | March 28, 2010 at 10:19 AM