Products · Pattern or everyday thing
Contact forms
Raised as a usability problem by 16 people on Hacker News over 17 years (2009–2025), in 15 threads.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads this year.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads in the last 5 years.
- 1
Every issue, all time, most people first
Contact forms are next to impossible to findUnreviewed
20092026- Over-long contact forms with many required fields make people give up2025-12-08
- Contact forms don't work and businesses don't fix them2024-05-04
- Contact form is so bad it discourages people from getting in touch2014-02-09
Unreviewed issues were grouped by machine: Claude Haiku labelled each comment as a usability complaint, named what it's about and summed up the problem in a line, and a small model grouped similar problems. Nobody has checked them by hand. Expect mistakes.
The newest 16 complaints
- Over-long contact forms with many required fields make people give up2025-12-08
- Contact forms give no confirmation that the message was received2025-06-10
- Forced hoops like scripts, CAPTCHAs, dropdown selection, and form resets before sending2024-10-09
- After submitting, users can't tell whether the message was actually delivered2024-08-21
- Form's top text makes the interface confusing and terrible to use2024-05-04
- Contact forms don't work and businesses don't fix them2024-05-04
- Submitting a form opens a mail app, requiring extra steps to send and close2024-04-27
- After submitting the contact form, the user is shown an empty results screen2019-11-06
- Users must click several steps and scroll to find where to type the message2014-02-13
- Contact form is so bad it discourages people from getting in touch2014-02-09
- Forced radio button for message purpose when the desired purpose isn't listed2013-09-30
- Visitors must jump through a captcha contact form instead of reaching the person directly2012-11-19
- Forced first and last name fields are unnecessary for replying to a query2011-07-04
- Contact form dropdown lacks an 'Other' option, so user cannot submit their query2010-07-28
- Nine input fields with no indication of which are required or optional2010-02-25
- Contact forms are next to impossible to find on many sites2009-11-13