Creating an inline contact form

Customer feedback is arguably one of the most critical factors determining the success of a product over a period of time. Hence, it’s not surprising that many websites have some form of contact form or another to encourage users to write back to them. Most of these “contact” pages tend to be on a separate page which is usually part of the navigation or is linked to with phrases like “we encourage your feedback” or “do get in touch with us”, etc.

However, I have often noticed that many people (unless they genuinely needed help), either back away from submitting their comments (when they are confronted by a large textarea on the contact page), or simply move away from the site as the contact page loads.

Today, let’s spice things up a bit by using jQuery to load a lightweight inline contact form. So, instead of loading a separate contact form page when the “contact us” link is clicked, we will just have a small textarea opens up dynamically right next to the link – so that the user can type his feedback and it can be submitted rightaway using AJAX. Our main aim here is to encourage more users…