I tend to not put an e-mail address up. Instead, I provide a contact form that sends an e-mail.
ceejayoz
2009-09-02 15:36:27
views:
125answers:
4
+1
A:
That kind of annoys me. I like seeing an email address and phone number. Make it easier for me to get in touch, not harder.
Jon B
2009-09-02 15:38:37
We have that, too. But are there a significant number of people out there that don't like that approach? I know when I go to a company's site and fill out a form I sometimes feel like I'm sending a message into a blank void whereas if I sent an email from Outlook or GMail or whatever I have evidence on my side that I actually sent them something.
Schnapple
2009-09-02 15:38:40
A:
If you have to put an email address on a page, you could build it in-line with JavaScript, in such a way that the text is unrecognisable to a screen scraper, e.g.
document.write("<" + "a hr" + "ef=" + "'ma" + "ilt" + "o:" + address + "'" + ">" + address + "<" + "/" + "a" + ">");
Where you would set the address variable in a similar way.
Christian Hayter
2009-09-02 15:40:37
No offense, but spam bots and screen scrapers are not the issue. Potential customers (actual humans) are literally clicking on the contacts on as many sites in this sector as possible and then going with the one with the lowest price. These are the kinds of customers my client will not land anyway so we want a way to thwart them.
Schnapple
2009-09-02 15:43:03
Ah, but how does the spammer obtain your email address if not by scraping your site? He's not going to waste time manually scanning millions of site updates looking for nuggets of gold.
Christian Hayter
2009-09-02 15:44:07
@Christian - the question states that the spammer IS manually going to each site. Not millions, but probably dozens. This is to request many quotes for some product. The company in question is not interested in these quote requests.
Jon B
2009-09-02 15:46:19
@Christian Hayter: We're talking a much smaller scale than that - the potential customer is going to, say, twenty sites. They're emailing all of them. Whomever gives them a price, and the lowest one, wins. But the client isn't selling something like books or something identical which can be price shopped. So by answering these emails they're wasting their time. I'm wondering if there's any way to thwart these "casual spammers" - I call them spammers when really they're just normal people emailing a lot of other people.
Schnapple
2009-09-02 15:49:06
Yes, sorry, misunderstood. In that case I vote for displaying a non-clickable email address on the page.
Christian Hayter
2009-09-02 15:50:36
A:
To thrawt scrapers, you could inject the email address after the page loads via javascript. However, it doesn't sound like you are as concerned with scrapers as authentic users sending emails. In which case, I do not have an answer for you.
Chance
2009-09-02 15:41:59
+3
A:
Honestly I don't think this problem has a technical solution. Even if the address is non-clickable, or you have to fill out a form, someone is probably still going to request the quote.
This needs to be solved in the sales process. Whoever answers these emails needs to be able to sense that they are bogus, and reply with a brief request for more information (which will likely go ignored).
Jon B
2009-09-02 15:54:31