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November 2, 2006
I'm often asked: "How do I make a web page so that visitors to my web site can submit their contact or order information to me?"
Let's pretend for a moment that you are a semi-professional photographer. You have a web site where you show off your best photographs. Suppose you'd like to offer prints of your best photographs for sale on your web site. We're talking about framed, professional quality prints that hang on your home or office walls. You put it off because it seems like a daunting task to create an online order system because you offer various sizes of prints with various frames and mattes. The best option in this case is to create a web page to collect contact and other information from a prospective buyer and have that information emailed to you. Then, you can follow up with the prospect, find out their needs and quote an exact price.
This works well in situations where order volume is low and an automated order processing system is not required. The example of higher-end customized photography fits this perfectly. This method also has the added bonus of creating a personalized order process where your customer gets to know you a little better. If handled correctly, this personal contact can really add to repeat sales.
Is it hard to do? How do you set up a web page to get contact information sent to you by email? The simple answer is you use a form. What's a web form? A form is a place on a web page with fields that allows a visitor to your web site to enter text and select choices. HTML Form tags are used to create a form. Inside the HTML Form tags, you place different types of HTML Field Tags. These can be the Input Tag for getting text such as a name or email address, the radio button or checkbox tags for selecting among choices, the select tag for creating a drop-down selector, etc. There's also the button type for creating a button such as the submit button that you're probably familiar with.
After the form, you'll need to create scripting that runs on the server to receive the data from the form and email it to you. This is easy on most servers and can, in fact, be part of the same web page that contains the form.
This is a low maintenance way to accept orders or other types of requests from your web site. It requires little maintenance and upkeep. My instructional video shows you how easy it is to make forms and scripting like I've just described, to get it, click here.
Fred
About the Author
Fred Black is an experienced programmer, web site developer, online business operator, systems integrator, father, husband, musician, and songwriter. Visit his Internet Business Blog at: http://www.pqInternet.com.
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Posted by Fred on November 2, 2006 | Printer-Friendly
TrackBack: http://www.pqInternet.com/Blog/mt-tb.cgi/11
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Internet Business
| Web Site Design, HTML, CSS
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Comments:
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I first designed the web page in Dreamweaver,and as you can tell by the first page, it is terrible, so I am redoing it in FrontPage.
My problem is the form is unprotected, where the school is getting a lot of spam in their e-mail.
So I have been looking on the internet that I can get a verification code or even that the formfields turn a different color if it is not properly filled right. Would you know where I could get one.
Thank you,
Patricia Stevenson
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