Capturing e-mail addresses from website test?

[soulstice]

I'm not very tech-savvy and have never done a website, so I'd like some help understanding a technique Tim recommends in the book.

On p. 171 he says, "If someone clicks on the 'purchase' button at the bottom of the first page, it takes them to a second page with pricing, shipping and handling, and basic contact fields to fill out (including e-mail and phone). If the visitor presses 'continue with order,' it takes them to a page that states, 'Unfortunately, we are currently on back order but will contact you as soon as we have product in stock. Thank you for your patience."

What I'd like to get clear about is:

1) Does pressing "continue with order" capture the visitors' e-mail addresses?
2) If it does, is this something that will happen automatically/is inherent to the function of the contact information fields on that page, or is it something I'd have to conscientiously build in myself?
3) If it's something I'd have to build in myself, could someone direct me to information about how to do this?

I'm concerned that people will visit the site once, see that the product is on back order and leave, and I'll have no way to contact them to get them to come back when the product is available.

Thanks in advance!

[Webzu]

You will need a form to have them enter their email address. I use Aweber and it works great. But you will need to ask them for their email address either before or after the order page. That's the "basic contact fields to fill out (including e-mail and phone)" Tim writes about.

[sethmason]

If you go to http://pxmethod.com you can see the example that he mentions in the book. Just fill in the information on the form and you'll get directed to a page that basically says "It's all on backorder. We'll contact you when it's ready." He doesn't let you know that it's on backorder until after you submit your information.

All that form does is submit it's values to http://www.aweber.com and send you to the backorder page.

If you are building your own site, you will need to provide the form and the submit that data so its something you will need to build to an extent. In the example above, the data gets submitted to aweber.com. But there are numerous scripts (some might even be provided by your webhost) out there that will do the same thing for you for free. Some will email you the the information and some will write them to a text file on your webserver.

If you do a search for "email capturing" and/or "form sumbit" you should get a wealth of information about it.

[MarkRoX]

You know... for the test page... I think it's worth the $100 to hire some genius college student to make the frontpage and then the transaction page and set it up however you want.

They do the layout and 'creating', while all you do is write all of the ad-copy and wording.

I should have my test site up by next weekend, and I thought about taking the time to do it myself cause it really is simple enough, but I decided my time was better spent doing almost ANYTHING else... plus, depending on the relationship you have with your web designer/graphic artists, they'll probably be happy to more of the small maintenance type things without too much extra costs.

And if you start with a great designer right off the bat... they'll be easier to work with when you need REAL product marketing design.

[Webzu]

You know... for the test page... I think it's worth the $100 to hire some genius college student to make the frontpage and then the transaction page and set it up however you want.

They do the layout and 'creating', while all you do is write all of the ad-copy and wording.

I should have my test site up by next weekend, and I thought about taking the time to do it myself cause it really is simple enough, but I decided my time was better spent doing almost ANYTHING else... plus, depending on the relationship you have with your web designer/graphic artists, they'll probably be happy to more of the small maintenance type things without too much extra costs.

And if you start with a great designer right off the bat... they'll be easier to work with when you need REAL product marketing design.

I like setting up design contests in web design forums, you get to pick among many nice designs. You can post a contest at OSEmpire (http://www.osempire.com/community/forumdisplay.php?f=78), post what you want with an examples and that you'll pay $100 and you'll have several nice designs to choose from. I've had several designs posted as contests over there for web headers, one page site template, and the members deliver nice work. Make sure you make it clear that you want an SEO friendly layout that you can easily add content with your HTML editor (I use dreamweaver).