The short version
Once a month, fill in every form on your site from your phone, using a personal email address. If a test doesn't reach your inbox or spam folder, ask whoever looks after your website where the form sends and how.
A contact form can stop sending and look exactly the same. A visitor fills it in, sees the thank-you message and assumes you've got it. The message never reaches your inbox, and nothing tells you.
Often the first sign is a customer ringing to ask why you never replied, or a quiet few weeks you put down to the time of year.
Why forms stop sending
A form does two jobs. It collects the message, which is the part visitors see, and then sends it on to you by email behind the scenes. That second part depends on a few things staying the same.
- The address it sends to has changed. Someone left, a mailbox was renamed, or you moved to a new email provider.
- The account that sends the email stopped working. A password was changed, a subscription lapsed or a connection expired.
- An update broke it. On WordPress sites, a plugin or theme update can stop a form working without any warning.
- The emails are landing in spam. If your domain's email settings aren't set up properly, inboxes treat form emails as suspicious.
- The spam protection is too strict and is blocking real people as well as bots.
A five-minute check you can run today
- Find every form on your site. The contact page, any quote or booking forms, and any in the footer.
- Fill each one in on your phone, as a customer would. Use a personal email address, such as a Gmail one, so you can check the reply in step 4.
- Check the message reaches your business inbox. Give it a few minutes, and look in spam and junk if it isn't there.
- Reply to it. Check the reply goes to the personal address you used. If it goes anywhere else, customers won't be getting your replies.
- Set a monthly reminder to do it again. Also repeat it after any change to your website or email.
If your test message doesn't arrive
Ask whoever looks after your website where the form sends to and how. If they can't tell you quickly, that's useful to know in itself. Some form tools also keep a copy of every message in the website's admin area, so check there for anything you might have missed.
What we do
On the websites we look after at Midlands Code Lab, we send a test enquiry after every change we make, to check the form still reaches the right inbox.
Need a hand with your contact form? Get in touch and we'll take a look.
Get in touch