As most of you already know, May 7th was US National Teacher Day, an occasion to celebrate and honor the contribution that teachers bring to our lives. Moreover, this entire week, in schools all over US, pupils and parents made an effort to show their appreciation through gift cards, flowers, poems and home-baked goodies. The positive impact of this initiative in schools can be enhanced by continuous feedback on the teaching and learning process.

We believe in the power of good schooling and we know that educators need reliable feedback to caliber their teaching methods by seeing what works and what doesn’t.  Student feedback is more than just a means of self-assessment; it’s a great appreciation technique that can be applied any day, all over the world.

Why should you ask for feedback?

Evaluation should be a two-way communication process. Everybody knows that, but how many have thought about giving students the chance to speak out their mind? As a teacher, you grade students’ performance almost each day, but from time to time it’s a good idea to switch roles and see how students assess your teaching methods. This will help you improve the quality of your lessons and will give you the opportunity to adapt to their specific needs.

Appraisal forms  can be fun and instructive as long as you keep an open mind and know how to process the information you obtain. Finding the suitable way to receive feedback can determine the outcome. So what tools will you use?

Gathering feedback through forms

A feedback form is the easiest and most efficient way to gather information about your students and your teaching methods. 123ContactForm can help you to create such forms in just a few clicks. When using our service, keep in mind that you can benefit from the following features:

• anonymity – in a face to face conversation students may not have the courage to tell what they truly think. Forms, on the other hand, can conceal students’ identity, which often increases the quality of the information provided. 123ContactForm allows you to create customized fields, adding terms and conditions to ensure the anonymity of the submitter.

• broad access – share the form on various platforms, social media channels or create an email form to be linked to your account and receive notifications in your inbox.

• easy management – when using 123ContactForm for education forms you have real-time editor and live updates directly in your dashboard. You can see the results in table view and compare them with ease. In case you will repeat the research, it’s simple to see what stats have changed.

• cost effective – with our free online survey tool  you can create feedback quizzes of any complexity and store all the data in the cloud. This is a paperless solution that can save you a lot of resources in comparison with traditional research methods.

• timesaving – send forms to be filled at home or allot a few minutes when you work with your students at computer. You can place a feedback button on your page if you have a blog or a website that you and your students use. This way, both students and parents can send submissions at any time.

Optimize your methods and exceed all expectations, always be in a frame of mind to change and be open to new approaches. Knowing your students and how they want to learn can improve the quality of your lessons and even their grades. Student feedback forms are a great and powerful tool for any educator to learn all the details they need to reach the best results.

Have any feedback upon our educator forms? Share your thoughts in the comments section below!

Image courtesy: Flickr

The post Feedback Forms to Harvest Teacher Appreciation Signs appeared first on 123ContactForm Blog.

Hello, world! I am Laura Iancu (nicknamed Laury), the newest member of the 123ContactForm team.

A dreamer by definition, I’ve liked being involved in social and educational projects since the early years of my student life. My studies in Communication and Public Relations opened my perspectives in this field which I’ve learned to love. My passion grew deeper and I started to blog about PR, social media and other things I love. I think I can finally say that I know what I want to do and I’ll do my best to be persistent and excel at it. Because I think that doing something with passion can only improve it.

This team and job just fit like a glove. It’s a joy to work in copywriting and PR. I hope you’ll see my articles out there and notice a bit of my enthusiasm. We have a great product that I am proud to promote.

Besides blogging and PR, which tend to occupy my entire work and free time (but I don’t mind ), I like to read as much as I can, travel and just enjoy the company of my loved ones.

I am grateful for how well the 123ContactForm team has received me; their happy spirit, dedication and ambition brighten my day.

The post Meet Laura, 123ContactForm’s PR specialist appeared first on 123ContactForm Blog.

The beauty of Stripe is that it lets you receive online payments without actually owning a merchant account or using a gateway of any sort. Stripe does all the work of sending direct payouts to your bank account, storing cards and subscriptions.

With the Stripe integration, your customers will remain on the order form at all times, with no redirect. The payment scenario is as simple as can be. After clicking the Purchase button, the form will show the total price of the items selected and a field where the buyer can enter his credit card data to complete the payment. When he hits the final Submit, the payment goes directly to your bank account.

How it works

To start receiving deposits, all you need to do is create your online payment form with 123ContactForm, sign up for Stripe and connect the two ends.

Activating the Stripe integration is a matter of a few clicks:

- In your form’s Settings -> Payments tab, tick Accept payments via Stripe, then click Connect with Stripe. This will prompt you to sign in to your Stripe account.
- Back to 123ContactForm, click Save for the payment settings. Make sure you’ve ticked Enable payments for this form.

It’s important to acknowledge that Stripe only operates with USD/CAD as a currency. In the case of recurring payments, such as for subscriptions or donations, the minimum period you can set is of one month. For a more in-depth guide on creating a Stripe payment form, please visit our Help section.

This is it – sit back and watch those payments flowing! To head start your sales, you can use 123ContactForm to accept discount coupons within your form. In which concerns form security, you’ll never have to worry – we take all the measures to ensure your transfers are 100% safe.

Effective payment system, happy clients

Stripe is the go-to payment method for everyone who wishes to shorten and optimize the order cycle. Whether you are a web developer wishing to empower clients with a simple e-commerce system, or a small business owner who sells online, you will save a great amount of time and effort on your side by using this integration.

So when you want to process credit card payments directly on your online form and get selling right away without any redundant formalities, we have one word for it: Stripe!

The post Accept Payments With No Gateway In Your Way: Stripe Integration appeared first on 123ContactForm Blog.

Most of us offer some sort of service on our blogs. Whether these are reviews on a product, a product itself, or just our expert advice, blogs offer real value to the user. So it’s only natural there should be some communication there, between blogger and user. Real communication builds trust and often leads to closing a sale.

You can post a comment, you can chat on Twitter, but nowadays (and this ain’t new) the best way to reach out is via customizable contact forms. In this post let’s look at how to use forms wisely to make yourself reachable.

Understand what the user wants

As you plan out where your forms will go, it helps to know what your users will ask for. Here are the most common requests you’ll see:

General advice/help
Users will ask general questions about your service. Let’s say you run a financial advice blog, for example. These blogs are BIG on questions, so you’ll get questions on home mortgages, student loans, retirement plans, and literally everything in between.

Product specific questions
If you sell a product, let’s say an eBook on financial planning, you’ll get more specific questions. Things like “How do I download the eBook?” and “Is the eBook free?” Even if you’re really clear on the details and make an FAQ section, you’ll still get those questions coming and you’ll surely want to field them quickly.

Networking
It’s possible folks will contact you for networking opportunities. Your schedule may look busy now, but you’ll still want to hear about that new gig on a bigger website, or a live event someone wants you to attend, or even speak at! These requests are just as important as those above.
So depending on the type of request you expect to receive, you should place the contact form in a different location. Let’s take a look.

Where to publish forms

Contact Us Pages
If it’s general advice you think you’ll be fielding, creating a “Contact Us” page on your blog or website is a great idea.

It’s simple, but nearly everyone messes this up!

The problem lies in design and here’s the solution. You want to add rich form features to make your form look appealing, and avoid just a white box with a few blanks. Add things like:
a. Images
b. Brand logos
c. Specific call to actions, like “Join the discussion here!”

Doing so will get a lot more attention on your form. Really, it will. Another idea is to put a few statistics on or near your form, things like # of people that have used the form, number of visitors daily, even number of subscribers using a form. Adding a social proof component to your contact page can really boost the feedback you get.

About Me Pages
The About Me page is a really personal way to say “Hey, feel free to reach out to me” on a blog. If it’s networking request you want or expect, an About Me page is a great place for the form.
Why? Because on this page people can get to know you, which allows them to direct specific networking questions in your direction. You know, the kind you actually want?

Landing Pages
Or, if it’s highly specific product-related questions you plan on receiving, a landing page can be a good place for your form.
Landing pages are excellent tools for highlighting product features and enticing the user to join in and make a purchase. If you put a form right smack dab on the landing page, you can field questions virtually in real time as the user considers your offer.

You’d be wise to tackle these questions straight away, because your user’s wallet won’t be out forever.

How to get people to your forms

So now that you’ve designed specific pages with contact forms tailored to your specific expectations, it’s time to get people over to those forms. Here are some strategies for increasing form usage:

a. Link to your forms in content
b. Again, use highly direct call to actions (“Interact with us here!”)
c. Give your contact pages SEO friendly links so more people arrive at them organically.
d. Put links to these pages in your menu tabs, sidebar, and all around the website.

You may find it best even just to tell users to use your forms if you have a live, public facing business. Heck, actual conversation still remains the best tactic for quick results.

Start today

There’s no point in waiting for users to just contact you. People have busy agenda, and often times need a little reminder. Plus, social interaction has long since proven to increase leads, conversions, and sales, so get out there and start using forms to better your business.
Post any questions you might have in the comments!

Image courtesy: FreeDigitalPhotos

The post How to Be Reachable on Your Blog: Best Contact Methods appeared first on 123ContactForm Blog.

Let’s take a quick tour of the additions. First of all, you probably noticed the sexy dark pink shade of 123ContactForm quite everywhere you look. Images got bigger and bolder – even since designing days, this feature has made the particular delight of our feminine crew. Whenever you might feel lost, our Kangaroo will welcome and guide you around.

The category menu is now more straightforward, so it’s simpler to explore topics on our blog. Within the How To section you can read about all the ins and outs of using 123ContactForm. BizTips is just what the name says: your source of business inspiration in tiny bits and bobs: handy web tools that can ease day to day jobs, witty business blogs where you might get your inspiration, and of course talks about web form intelligence for your business.

Under the Customers tab we feature, well, customer love stories together with real life scenarios involving 123ContactForm in action – check it out! Last but not least, ladies and gentlemen, we give you the Kangaroos! This is the section for 123ContactForm’s company culture, where we feature new team members and share general facts about how we roll (utterly necessary to know before you ever decide to do business with us).

All in all, we are quite jazzed with the result. Hit us with your thoughts and don’t forget to subscribe for our updates, if you haven’t already!

The post 123ContactForm Blog Just Got a New Face appeared first on 123ContactForm Blog.

We’re thrilled to announce our Application Programming Interface (API) release. With this implementation we are now simplifying things for those who want to integrate their system with the 123ContactForm platform. The API functionality allows developers to easily customize their system’s performance by retrieving and using data from their 123ContactForm account.

How to Get it Rolling

Check our API documentation and see what you need to do to put your API on wheels. You will find the technical information that makes all of the magic possible.

123ContactForm API Usage – Examples & Scenarios

There were a lot of API requests coming from our prospective partners. Having analyzed their needs, we believe it would be helpful to share those insights with you – this might ring a bell even for those who don’t delve into coding on a daily basis.

Example 1. Retrieving web form data with API for a paywall charging system

A digital newspaper came with the API enquiry in order to implement a paywall strategy that would allow paid users to access premium articles. They needed the API to retrieve their form submissions from their 123ContactForm account, and to synchronize it with an external CRM software and a payment system. This represented a valuable solution for their paywall.

Example 2. Retrieving web form data through the API for powerful reporting

A landing page CRM who employ our registration forms on their system needed the API to retrieve user registration details and statistics from their registration forms. They display this information in their clients’ accounts in order to show the visitor-to-lead conversion rate statistics for each landing page. This helps them make better decisions in terms of conversion strategy.

We hope you find our API helpful and inspiring. If you have any questions or want to share your API usage ideas, please leave a comment below.

The post A big hooray to 123ContactForm’s API release appeared first on 123ContactForm Blog.

Guess what lingers as my strongest memory from back then? Of course, the dreaded paper forms. When I was showing up in the school’s cafeteria carrying my cardboard folder, all of my friends were very much aware I was going to my teaching classes next. The whole paper thing was not too pleasant for me as a student back then and surely not the most effective data management system for anybody involved.

It’s a general phenomenon. Since schools and colleges everywhere need to process hefty amounts of data inputted by students, parents and teachers alike, what can we do to optimize the entire process for the sake of sanity?

Less time, more reach and no paper burdens

All the loads of paper that crowd the offices of school administrators and the homes of our nation’s teachers can be replaced elegantly with their online alternative. Think how simple it would be to use 123ContactForm’s online education forms that you create in a few clicks and then disseminate to everybody as links instead of spending hours on tweaking a layout in a word processing application, then printing everything – and maybe snail mailing the packages?

Let’s go further with our online school survey example. Whether it’s intended for the schooled or for school staff, it’s far easier for everybody to fill in the responses while sitting comfortable in front of their computers, or using their mobile devices, rather than holding a paper fold on their lap.

Internet is part of every person’s life, thus linking the survey on your school’s website can help reach a lot more recipients than handing over the physical forms. We all know how difficult it is to gather people together; now you can basically have the entire community of parents participate in your school survey without holding a single face-to-face meeting with them.

School surveys in three phases

Online surveys are great tools for obtaining insights at all stages of the educational process. For K-12 institutions, a school climate survey carried regularly helps take the pulse of the teacher-student relations and overall atmosphere. As we reach higher age groups, college surveys can come in all shapes and sizes: college accommodation survey, interest questionnaires and many more. For final year students, a career interest survey can be a very enlightening experience.

With the survey making tools provided by 123ContactForm it’s easy to build any form or questionnaire and manage data from one dashboard – all without a single sheet of paper on your desk. The best place to start experimenting around is the gallery of free education form templates. Go ahead and customize your survey’s look and behavior to represent your school’s interests best. We would be glad to receive your feedback in the comments below!

Image courtesy: Free Digital Photos

The post Online Surveys to Relief School Paper Pressure appeared first on 123ContactForm Blog.

Beyond simply displaying your cause and goals, the website should call to action quickly and firmly. This is for two reasons. Most donors use information from the Internet before giving, whether online or offline – the website is their last check point before completing the donation. Secondly, online donations are impulsive by nature and people who donate on the web tend to give significantly more than offline donors, according to recent studies.

The key of online donations is at hand: make it convenient for people to give by using a wise and visually appealing donation form. And there are three essential elements of a good donation-oriented website: simplicity of use, sense of security and positive outcome.

Accessibility

It all starts with a clear information hierarchy. Include a short mission statement on your website, accompanied by a list with your goals and objectives from which derives the purpose you call people to donate.  Next, your page should have a powerful call to action – a big button saying DONATE or whatever formula you find appropriate.

People need to be informed on the amount of money required and the finality of their donation. Soles 4 Souls for example gives one pair of shoes to the impoverished for each dollar that’s donated.

Ways to use your 123ContactForm donation form:

• Embedding it on your website
• URL links disseminated via email or messenger
• Sharing the on your Facebook page and via Twitter
• Mobile campaigns.

Sense of security

Your donation form should let people choose whether they want to give once or make it a recurring payment. It’s also important to let them input or choose the amount they wish to give. You can add social sharing buttons within the form, to make it easy for people to spread the word across social networks.

It’s a no brainer: your donation request form should accommodate as many payment methods and credit card types as possible. Speaking of integrations with payment processors, PayPal works best for most part of the world, Authorize.Net has its own share of popularity too, while Google Checkout is one of the friendliest payment methods out there.

To reinforce people’s trust, make sure you have a seal that tells you satisfy the legal requirements for collecting online donations (check out with your state attorney to see the regulations for your region). Also, show testimonials, media links and photos of previous donors to testify that your program has gained people’s trust. SSL data encryption for secure forms is a must.

Reward for your donors

A strong motivation for people to give is when they can see the history of their donations, so make sure you recorded it on the website. You can consider offering honorary gifts and recognitions to the most generous donors. With 123ContactForm you can offer downloadable goods through a link in the autoresponder (see our File Download Form template for example).

In which concerns online donations, simple is (most of the time) best. Remove clutter, create a friendly atmosphere and donations will flow. Good luck!

Image courtesy: Courtney Carmody

The post The Ins and Outs of a Good Donation-Oriented Website appeared first on 123ContactForm Blog.

Even though the enhancements we will feature below are in beta phase and effects are quite unpredictable at this time, what’s sure is that social web is changing and many businesses have already embarked in the early adopters’ bandwagon.

Facebook Graph Search

The new and shiny search feature on Facebook has already become a press buzzword. Beta version was rolled out five weeks ago and is currently extended to “hundreds of thousands of users”. Graph Search is basically a custom search engine for every user, with combined queries (for the moment just “and” operators, “or” is soon to be introduced).

For small and big businesses alike, there are tons of marketing magic to unveil here. Facebook Graph Search helps you filter data about your target customers that would have otherwise been hard or impossible to track down. For example, by a simple type you can now learn who of your business page’s fans is keen on certain places, or likes other related brands. Go ahead and explore co-interests of your customers to discover ever new partnership and promotion opportunities for your business!

Twitter Ad API

If you are not a Twitter person in particular, you may find it a bit over the top to advertise your business there. However, recent statistics prove that your customers may as well already be active Twitter users. Since 2010, Twitter permits running ads in the format of promoted tweets for certain brands, and is now planning to extend advertising opportunities to small businesses.

The big news around the corner is that Twitter is planning to launch a new Ad API which will enable brands to run ads in a more targeted and automated manner, like on Facebook and LinkedIn. Stay tuned, small business marketers, for a new stream of promotional spots will be at your hand soon.

Google Ads for desktop to be combined with their mobile version

It seems like Google will soon remove boundaries between desktop and mobile ads. All of your ads will run on both platforms, and you will be able to set a weighting factor between the two of them. In other words, no more mobile only ads, neither desktop only. As Daina Middleton, the CEO of Performics said, it’s expected that ad costs will increase with about three percent.

This change is an opportunity for your business to step in the mobile ads bandwagon if you didn’t do it yet. It’s a no brainer: you need to have a mobile optimized website in order to reach high conversions on this type of advertising (remember your 123ContactForm small business forms are 100% mobile optimized). Go ahead and build new and more targeted messages to reach your audiences at a higher level!

The post News Digest: Twitter Ads, Graph Search + Your Small Business appeared first on 123ContactForm Blog.

Here at 123ContactForm customer care is a both-sided concept. Joining our support team’s daily job, our awesome users give us back plenty of care and attention, and we sure feel it. Strongly. We wish to give a warm “Thank You” to all of you who helped shape 123ContactForm to the stage it is now.

Everyone who gives credit to 123ContactForm, either by positive or negative criticism, is our most helpful ally. Let me jot down just some of the reasons why we are deeply and sincerely in love with you.

• As our homepage shows, the kangaroo has so far sent along over 17 million form submissions you’ve made through our service. Handling us your data means you trust 123ContactForm and our secure online forms. Thank you!
• You had patience with us when we were down (literally) and stood by us through the hard times like a real friend does. In the minutes when our servers happened to have downtime, we received supportive comments and a certain person in the US even offered us homemade cookies. We are indeed lucky to have you, people, beside!
• You’ve shown us that you enjoy using our service, and this reflects in the search stats and rankings we have today. If you like us, Google likes us too. And we are thrilled about it.
• Each month we find that people from over 180 countries interact with our website. This means almost all the surface of the world, apart from the icy lands and deserted areas. Gosh, we do enjoy speaking a language that everybody understands!

The kangaroos at 123ContactForm are hopping around in joy as I write these words. Rest assured that we will give our best to maintain the quality of our service and to constantly add the new features you’ve been requesting. Way to go, fellas!

The post 123ContactForm Loves You! appeared first on 123ContactForm Blog.