How to test your website's contact form in two minutes
A contact form can look perfect and deliver nothing. The visitor fills it in, presses Send and leaves thinking they have asked you for a quote. You never hear about it, so you never know it happened.
This morning I changed several pages on my own website, so I tested my own form again afterwards. I sent a real test message through it and checked that it reached my inbox. It took two minutes, and it is the only test that proves a form works.
Why a form fails without anyone noticing
Most website forms do not send the email themselves. They hand the message to a form service, which passes it on to an email address. Any link in that chain can break quietly.
The form service account lapses, or reaches the number of messages it allows in a month. The address it sends to changes, or belongs to someone who has left. A change to the website breaks the form and nobody tries it afterwards. Or the message arrives, but in a folder nobody opens.
None of these shows on the website. The form still looks fine.
The folder nobody opens
This one is the easiest to miss. On a site I launched this month, the enquiries were arriving. But the business uses Gmail, and Gmail had filed them under the Promotions tab, where they sit among the newsletters and are easy to overlook. The form worked. The enquiries could still be missed.
The fix takes a moment. Drag one enquiry into the Primary tab, and when Gmail asks whether to do the same for future messages from that sender, say yes.
The two-minute test
1. Use your phone and a personal email address. Fill in the form the way a customer would, from your phone, with a personal address rather than the business one. You see exactly what a customer sees, and the reply test below works properly.
2. Watch what happens when you press Send. The page should tell you clearly that the message went through. If nothing happens, or the page just reloads, a customer presses again or gives up.
3. Check where it should arrive. Give it five minutes. Look in the inbox, the spam folder and, in Gmail, the Promotions tab.
4. Press Reply. Your reply should go to the customer's address. If it goes to a no-reply address belonging to the form service, every quick answer you send disappears.
5. Check who else receives it. If the form goes to one person, ask what happens when that person is on leave. An address that two people read is safer.
How often to do it
Once a month, and again whenever anything on the website changes. It takes two minutes. Put it in your calendar so it does not depend on remembering.
What a website test can and cannot see
The free website test checks whether your site has a form and whether that form has somewhere to send to. It cannot tell whether the message reaches your inbox, because that happens out of sight, after the form has done its part. Only a real test message proves that.
It is also why every site I build has its form tested with a real message to the owner's inbox before it goes live.