An Embedded Form Carrying Outside Branding

A contact page in two styles

The site has its own colours, typeface and logo all the way to the contact page. Then, halfway down, a box appears in a different font and a different blue, with another company's logo at the top.

At the bottom, a line invites the visitor to make their own free form. On some free plans there is an advert as well.

It was quick to set up. Someone pasted a few lines of code into the page years ago, and it has worked well enough since.

But a visitor about to type a name, a phone number and what they need is now looking at a page that seems to belong to two businesses.

What the visitor notices

• Another company's logo inside your page.
• Fonts and colours that match nothing else on the site.
• A link inviting them to build a form of their own.
• An advert for something you do not sell.
• A box that scrolls inside the page on a phone.
• A thank-you from a company they have never heard of.

The last leaves doubt after the form is sent. A confirmation carrying someone else's name tells the visitor their details went somewhere else, which is true.

Why people hesitate

Visitors judge a site partly by consistency. A sudden change of design at the exact moment they are asked for personal details looks like a redirect, or a page that has been tampered with.

Careful people stop there. Some email instead, some phone, and some leave to try the next business on the list.

The ones who send the form anyway are not the problem. The ones who hesitated and left are, and nothing records them.

Where submissions actually go

An embedded form sends its data to the form company first. From there, a notification goes to whichever email address set up the account.

That is often the address of the designer who built the site, a staff member who has since left, or an inbox nobody checks.

Free plans often carry limits, such as a number of submissions a month, after which new ones are held back or refused. Check what happens on yours above the limit.

And the details visitors type are personal information held on someone else's servers, possibly outside Canada. Your business is still responsible for them.

Phones make it worse

Embedded forms usually sit in a frame of fixed height. On a narrow screen the frame either cuts the form off or scrolls inside the page, so a thumb trying to scroll the page moves the form instead.

Error messages arrive in the form company's style, and the confirmation often appears inside the frame, out of view of a visitor who has scrolled.

A worked example

A hat maker works from a small upstairs studio, making fedoras, cloches and wide-brimmed sun hats by hand to each customer's head size.

Her site was designed in black and cream, with a serif typeface and large photographs of finished hats.

The custom order page used a free embedded form: a grey box, a plain sans-serif font, a bright blue button, the form company's logo and a link to create a free form.

Customers started emailing instead, and two asked whether the form was really hers.

When she tested it, the notifications were going to the web designer who had built the site three years earlier. He forwarded them whenever he noticed them, sometimes days later.

The rebuilt form sits inside the site in its own fonts and colours.

It asks for head measurement in centimetres or inches, with a short note on how to measure, plus style, colour, the occasion and the date the hat is needed.

Submissions go to her own inbox, a copy is kept on the site, and a confirmation page in the site's design says what happens next. She tests it from her phone on the first of each month.

Build it in, in your style

A form built into the site uses the same type, colours and buttons as every other page, so the visitor never feels handed over.

It submits to your own server, emails your inbox, keeps a copy in case an email goes astray, and can send the visitor to a confirmation page of your own.

On most content management systems this is routine work for whoever looks after the site.

Spam without the puzzles

One reason people reach for an outside form is spam protection. A built-in form needs some too, but it does not have to be a distorted word puzzle that real customers fail.

An invisible field that people never see but scripts complete, a check on how quickly the form came back, and a filter on links in the message stop most junk without asking visitors to prove anything.

If the form stays, lose the branding

Some embedded tools earn their place. If yours does, move to a plan that removes the company's logo and adverts and lets you set your own fonts and colours.

Put the account under a business email address you control, with a password someone in the business knows. Set the notification address to the inbox that is actually read.

Export the past submissions while you are there. They are your enquiries, and you will want them if the form ever moves.

The counter-case

Embedded tools sometimes do things that are expensive to build: taking payments, handling large file uploads, or branching questions. Some also provide a secure HTTPS page when the site itself has no certificate yet.

Those are good reasons to keep one, on a plan without outside branding and styled to match, until the site can do the same.

Either way, the form should look like yours and send where you think it does.

Before the next enquiry

1. Open the contact page on a phone.
2. Look for another company's logo or adverts.
3. Send a test enquiry and find where it lands.
4. Find out who holds the form account.
5. Check the plan's monthly limit.
6. Remove the outside branding, or rebuild the form.
7. Match fonts, colours and buttons to the site.

Step three is the one that finds the hidden problem. A form can look acceptable for years while every enquiry goes to someone who no longer works with you.

What the visitor sees after pressing send is covered in a form confirmation shown off the screen.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.