Sign Up Form

A Sign Up Form is designed to be a quick way for customers to sign up to client communications. With Spektrix a sign up form can also be used to create an account at the same time.

The process below uses a standard HTML <form> to capture Name, Email and set contact preferences.

It's possible to use our API directly to create richer forms of data capture that can also send extra data to Spektrix using Tags and Attributes. See the guide on API Sign Up Forms for more information.

Overview

When a customer fills in the form:

• A customer account is created on the system with three basic details:
  • First Name
  • Last Name
  • Email Address
• Any Contact Preferences set on the Clients system that are set to "Connect to DotDigital" will also be attached to the record as a "yes".
• The customer will receive an email (if the client has chosen this option in Spektrix Settings) confirming their new account and asking them to set a password.
• The customer will have 2 hours to set a password before the link expires.

Whether the customer creates a password or not, the account will be active from that point onwards. A customer can always reset their password via any login point in the purchase path.

Adding a Sign Up Form

We provide an open endpoint that the form data can be sent to, which will consume this information and also provide a redirect back to a page of your choosing. This redirect will also add URI parameters if any errors arise in validation.

Bot Management

Spektrix maintains a bot management solution to prevent spam sign up attacks to signup.aspx. We would still encourage you to explore additional methods such as Honeypot traps and/or a Recaptcha solution to help discourage any attempts to attack this endpoint.

Using a Form Element

A standard HTML <form> element can be used for this purpose. This will require;

• Three <input> text elements, each with a corresponding <label> to capture the customers details, with name attributes of

  • FirstName
  • LastName
  • Email

• A hidden <input> element with a name of ReturnUrl, with the full page address of where you wish the user to be redirected to on submission.

• An <input> element of type submit.

• The <form> element attribute having an action of https://system.spektrix.com/clientname/website/secure/signup.aspx and a method of POST.

Make sure you replace the clientname field with your client name:

Below is an example of what this may look like.

<form
	action="https://system.spektrix.com/clientname/website/secure/signup.aspx"
	method="POST"
>
	<input
		type="hidden"
		name="ReturnUrl"
		value="https://mydomain.com/pagetosend"
	/>

	<label for="FirstName">First Name:</label>
	<input name="FirstName" id="FirstName" type="text" />

	<label for="LastName">Last Name:</label>
	<input name="LastName" id="LastName" type="text" />

	<label for="Email">Email Address:</label>
	<input name="Email" id="Email" type="text" />

	<input type="submit" name="submit" value="Submit" />
</form>

The ReturnURL is the page on your website to which people are sent after clicking the Submit button, so you should make sure you choose an appropriate page for where you would like customers to go and what you want them to see. They will be sent to this page regardless of whether they have filled the form out correctly.

Cloudflare error

If your DNS hosting provider is "Cloudflare", you might run into issues with the Sign Up Form. This happens because Spektrix also uses Cloudflare which which can cause internal issues related to DNS resolution when submitting the form. If you are running into an error message from Cloudflare with the error code 1020 'Access denied' upon form submission, you need to change the POST from custom domain to system.spektrix.com. The Sign Up Form is both cookie-less and session-less so with current web browser standards, use of an un-matching domain should not cause issues for the end user.

Handling Errors

When customers click the Submit button they will be returned to the page that you’ve specified as the ReturnUrl value. They will be sent to this page regardless of whether they have completed the form correctly or not.

If there were errors in the form, then a URI parameter will be appended to the return URL. This attribute will show what error was made - these errors are:

• Error=NoEmail: when no email address has been given.
• Error=NoLastName: when no last name has been given.
• Error=InvalidEmail: when the email address provided is invalid.
• Error=EmailAddressTooLong : The email address given is longer than 255 characters
• Error=FirstNameTooLong : The first name provided is longer than 30 characters
• Error=LastNameTooLong : The last name provided is longer than 80 characters

If a customer's email already exists, the form will update the contact preferences on that customers account. This ensures they are signed up to the mailing list and they will then be sent to the returnURL page as a successful sign up.

For example https://mydomain.com/pagetosend?Error=NoEmail would reflect the fact that the customer tried to create an account without inputting an email address.

Your return URL must therefore be able to handle these errors and display an appropriate message.

Gathering further information

If you want to create a form which gathers more than just the basic information, you can use the Spektrix API.