Manually test any submission forms to ensure the proper user experience.

Want to make a customer fighting mad? Leave a broken form on the website you just built for them!

Forms are generally one of the most common “conversions” website owners want visitors to make. It can be tempting to assume they are working just like you intended, but it’s important to test each and every form before you publish it live on a website.

Simple Form Testing Procedure

To test your forms, make sure they set to submit to an email address you have access to (you’re going to need 2 email addresses for these tests, so we’ll call this email address ‘Email A’).

After you’ve set ‘Email A’ as the “to” address in your form, navigate to the front end of your website and fill in the form as if you were a customer, this time using a different email address (‘Email B’), and submit the form.

You’ll want to check the inbox for ‘Email A’ and make sure the form submission make its way to the inbox.

If you are sending any kind of receipt to the customer, check the inbox for ‘Email B’ and make sure that arrived too.

Advanced forms, automation, and e-commerce

Sometimes you’ll have forms that are more complex than a simple “contact form”. In this case, you’ll want to make sure any automations are firing correctly, or that transactions are going through.

Again, the best way to test this is to do it manually and submit the form as a user would. With access to both ‘Email A’ and ‘Email B’ you’ll be able to see exactly what the website owner and the customer will see.

Test it again!

It’s a great idea to test your forms before you go live, but you’re going to want to test them again after the website is published. This ensures everything is still working as expected after the go live.

If the website your building is for a client, you’ll want to get them involved in the process by submitting the form to their email address, and ensuring they get the notifications they need.

Depending on how your transactional emails are setup, your customer might not know what to look for. It’s important that they are on the lookout and recognize these emails as these are often new leads or orders from their website.