▢Forms

Forms collect enquiries without your email address being publicly on the web. That is the practical reason: an address on a website is harvested by spam bots within weeks.

You create a form and insert it as a block on a page — the responses arrive in the Forms area.

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You decide what is asked: name, email, message, plus selection fields such as “Subject” if needed.

The most important rule is also stated in the interface: ask only for what you really need — every required field costs you enquiries.

For most businesses, three fields are enough. Anyone who makes salutation, company, street, postcode, preferred date and subject mandatory gets fewer enquiries — not better ones.

Then no recipients have been entered. Without recipients, the responses sit quietly in the admin area — they are not lost, but nobody hears about them.

Enter the addresses that should receive an email for every new response. Preferably more than one: a form whose only recipient is on holiday is a silent loss of business.

In the Forms area. There you can read them and export them.

When exporting, remember that this is personal data: the exported file leaves the protected area and is subject to the same obligations as the data in the system.

Because personal data is collected, your privacy notice must be in place — it is created in the Legal area and automatically adds the appropriate sections as soon as you activate forms.

Three points beyond that:

• State the purpose. What you use the data for belongs on the form or in the linked notice.
• No storing data just in case. Enquiries that have been dealt with should be deleted at some point.
• No unnecessary required fields. Data minimisation is not a recommendation but a principle of the GDPR.

Sooner or later this affects every publicly reachable form. What helps:

• Fewer fields, but one required free-text field — bots often fill it with nonsense, which you notice when reading.
• A “Subject” selection field with no preselection.
• No additional email address on the page, otherwise the form is of little use.

What does not help: hiding the form. Whatever finds it is usually the bot, not the customer.

Not automatically — Aurora Hive Sites and Sales are separate programs.

The most convenient way is to set up the form so that each response is also sent by email to a mailbox that Aurora Hive Sales syncs. The enquiry then appears in the inbox and can be created as a contact from there.

Alternatively, export the responses and bring them in via the data import.

As few as possible — every required field costs you enquiries.

For most businesses this is enough: one way to get in touch (email or phone) and the message. A name is pleasant but rarely necessary; anything else you can ask in conversation.

If you require a callback number, you lose everyone who would rather write. If you require an email address, you lose everyone who would rather call. So: one of the two is enough.

A confirmation on the page. Word it so that it is clear what happens next — “We will get back to you within one working day” is worth more than “Thank you”.

If you name a deadline, keep to it. An enquiry left unanswered after a promised deadline is worse than one with no promise.

Usually not. A contact form with a “Subject” selection field covers almost everything and keeps the responses in one place.

A second one is worthwhile when the enquiries really are different and different people answer them — job applications as opposed to customer enquiries, for example. Then different recipients belong to them as well.

As long as you need them, and then delete them. An enquiry from three years ago that was dealt with long ago is not an archive but a risk.

Set a retention period that suits your business and tidy up regularly. Anything you want to keep belongs in your CRM anyway, not in the form inbox.

A mandatory “I have read it” tick box is legally disputed and, in practice, an obstacle. What is required is information: before submitting, the sender must learn what happens to their data — a visible note with a link to the privacy notice is enough for that.

You need a genuine consent tick box where you want more than to answer the enquiry — adding the address to a newsletter, for example. And that is then a separate box that is not pre-ticked.