Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been appreciative of captcha when there was nothing else.
If you are new to the term “captcha”, it’s an image designed to stop spam on forms and applications. It requires users to prove they aren’t a spambot by typing in a few scrambled letters or numbers.
So while captcha’s have been useful at stopping spam — a phenomenon I consider one of the biggest scrooges ruining our fabulous Internet experience; it’s also had a major downside. We now know that captcha’s frustrate some users (myself included) who fumble over the order of letters and #’s and thus decreases user response.
The honeypot is a cool alternative
We’ve switched our site to a solution called a honeypot that stops spam but is invisible to the user. It works by adding a small “trap” to the email; that trap is a fake field. If the site detects that the field is filled; than a spambot is confirmed and the spam gets deleted.
If the field is empty—you guessed it—a human filled out the form and the email is allowed through. Nice and simple. Of course, we can only expect this to work for a time until the spammers figure out a work around.
Beautiful solution that doesn’t interfere with the user experience and the email response form.
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Karen Nierlich is a web marketing consultant at Full Orbit Web and Marketing. She helps clients solve the big and small problems of online marketing so they can thrive online. Contact us at 510-525-1341, if you are interested in generating more leads and prospects online.