Do you feel you are getting a LOT OF SPAM these days, asking you to submit your bank details to get your lottery winnings, saying that they found you on Google and want to help you rank better? You start researching and soon find that so many of these are coming in from the contact form on your website. So what do you do next? It can be frustrating and time-consuming to have to sift through the spam entries in order to find those real people trying to reach you.
Built-in anti-spam functionality
Thankfully, there are a few things that you can implement on your website in order to reduce the amount of spam you receive.
If you have a WordPress site, then don’t go past using the Gravity Forms plugin. The plugin provides built-in anti-spam features, and has greater functionality and support than the majority of other form plugins.
Other plugins and options
If you’re already using Gravity Forms, or you’re happy with your current forms plugin, there are a few other options you can implement:
- Install the Akismet anti-spam plugin and enable integration
- Setup a honeypot on all forms (this is an option on Gravity Forms)
- Setup a captcha (I am not a robot checkbox) on all forms (this is also an option in gravity forms)
For more options when using Gravity Forms, you can check out their Anti-Spam tips here.
For WooCommerce users
If your site is using WooCommerce, you can also:
There are a few additional steps you can take if the above doesn’t work:
- If you are finding your spam often contains non-English characters, these can be blocked by custom coding on your site, if they are not required to deliver your services
- If your spam seems to be coming from particular countries, site access from these countries can be blocked via your hosting configuration
- If using WooCommerce, you can install the YITH Anti-Fraud Plugin
If you're using a CMS other than WordPress
If you’re running a site not on WordPress (for example, Wix or Shopify), you can generally find some tips from the Support area of your site’s platform. If you have a custom-built website, touch base with your developer and see if they have any further tools that can be implemented.
Unfortunately there is no be all or end all solution to effectively stop all spam, and there are hundreds of different techniques used for spamming websites. But by simply having a range of different methods in place can reduce the spam impact on your website considerably.
If you’re a Not For Profit and struggling with spam, or simply want the reassurance of knowing it’s being dealt with professionally, reach out to our team for help!
