Website forms are important for gathering information from your site’s visitors and have myriad uses: Contact forms allow them to reach you with questions or to express interest in your services, without you needing to post your email address on your site (putting your email address up, even scrambled with javascript, is a beacon to spammers’ crawlers to come harvest it for their nefarious uses). Surveys help you gather information from your site visitors or blog readers. Workshop registration forms make it easy for participants to sign up.
The trouble is, forms on your website or blog are often a real pain for the novice to get up and running properly and you can go through a whole lot of Tylenol in the process. Or you have to dish out money for your web gal or guy to do it for you.
Now comes Wufoo, an online tool that “helps anyone build and host amazing online forms.” I’ve tested them out and they’re true to their word. In only a few minutes I was able to create a short survey and get it up and running smoothly. No pain at all and the Tylenol bottle remained quietly in the medicine cabinet.
Wufoo’s free for up to three forms used at any one time, then a reasonable $9/month for the next level up. I’m guessing that most of you would be served well by the free version. What kinds of forms can you build with Wufoo? Here are some of the examples they suggest:
- Contact Form
- Mailing List
- Survey
- Workshop Registration
- Event Calendar
- Invitations / RSVP
- Address Book
- Quizzes / Tests
Not sure what a Wufoo is but happy to see an easy web form application out there!
