Do you prefer direct email or contact forms in websites.

contact form, I think its less personal. I tend to not want to email someone directly I don’t know, its just kinda weird, i dont know why. Even though they’re effectively the same thing, it feels different.

I prefer a form. I use gmail and when I click on a mailto link it opens Mail.app. A total pain is the ass since it wants me to create a new account.

I think it varies between the two depending on the person and the reason for contacting you. I always include both.

I prefer an email address—that way I have a copy in my sent items so I can reference it later.

I think richardhenry nails it. I would do both. I should update some forms now.

I personally prefer contact forms. I like having some (perceived) distance from the person if I’m contacting someone I don’t know.

I prefer contact forms, but want email addresses for the site’s principals.

I prefer e-mail – it’s my preferred means of communication for business matters. I like to have things documented.

Personally, I prefer email. But I had a client who literally dispised any website without a well designed contact form, because she loved the convenience of being able to request a phone call, business card or a mail out without having to open her mail client.

I will say that many people probably don’t have a mail client properly configured on their computers. And when that mail client pops up, it can sometimes lead people to just forget about the whole thing and look elsewhere.

Thank you very much!

Always email, though contact forms are a necessary evil.

Far prefer email. It gives more a feeling of delivering a message to a recipient, it’s not just signing a list-type-thing.

Contact form. You don’t know who/what kind of person you’re talking to, so a contact form, which is less formal/more impersonal suits this idea fine.

Contact form to allow for anonymous one-way communication.

Email whenever a reply will be expected as then the user can maintain a complete track of the discussion for himself.