One of the key values of your website, as with all your other digital assets is to be a channel for communication between you and your clients, and an easy way to facilitate this is to add a site form, strategically across your site as a call to action.
As a data gathering and communication medium, forms are invaluable. Not only do they allow you to control the kind of information you want, if properly designed, they can be painless and encouraging for your clients. There is, however, a downside to site-forms, you get SPAMMED, a lot. And by spam, we don’t mean the tasty versatile meat that you can “grill, fry, or eat right out of the can”, which by the way turned 80 this year.
We mean the annoying hordes of unsolicited emails selling you stuff you don’t need, flooding your inbox, keeping you away from the important emails you set up the form for. And SPAM is on a meteoric rise, 65% of global mail is SPAM, and up to 10% of that is malicious.
So unlike the delicious meat, which by the way has 100+ recipes, you definitely want to keep SPAM at bay. If you have a WordPress or other CMS site, the task is not too difficult, just add an antispam plugin, but if you run an HTML site, you going to have to do a little coding.
Luckily, the solution will not break the bank, as a matter of fact, it is free, all you need is a Google account, and that solution is Google reCAPTCHA.
Getting Started with reCAPTCHA
1. Click on the link above or visit, https://www.google.com/recaptcha/intro/android.html (Bonus: there’s a picture of a cute cat on this page).
2. Click “Get reCAPTCHA”, if you are not logged into your account you will be prompted to
3. Register new site, Choose a label you can remember easily, choose the type of reCAPTCHA you want, enter the domains you want to protect and accept the terms then click register.
4. This will take you to a screen with your keys a and instructions on adding reCAPTCHA to your site
5. Configure reCAPTCHA on your site, this article contains valuable information on configuring reCAPTCHA server – side and client side. The configurations require knowledge of HTML so get hold of your IT, you webmaster, or your friendly neighbourhood Mut-Con, http.www.mut-con.co.za, we can get your reCAPTCHA up and filtering the bots in no time.
6. Enjoy SPAM free messages from your site-forms, give your clients what they want, prosper and enjoy some Spam, the meaty kind.
