Contact forms
What shoppers sent through the forms of your shops — product inquiries in catalog mode and the Contact form section: the list, the detail, the link to the customer and deleting.
On this page
Contact forms are the messages shoppers sent through the forms of your shops — a question about a product, a request for a quote, a note from a “Contact us” page. Monokaido stores every message sent, and in E-commerce → Contact forms (Opens in a new tab) you see them all in one place, from every shop of the company. You answer the shopper yourself, at the e-mail or phone number they left in the form.
Where messages come from
| Form | Where the shopper fills it in | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Product inquiry | On the product page of a shop in catalog mode — in place of the buy button. | Switched on and set up in the storefront builder: Design → Inquiry form. The message carries the product and the selected variant. |
| Contact form section | A section you add to the home page in the storefront builder. | Works in a shop that sells normally, too. In the list it goes by the section heading. |
| Your own form | A form of your own frontend, which connects to Monokaido with an access key. | Your developer finds how to connect it in the storefront API documentation. |
What the shopper fills in
The e-mail is always there — without it the form is not sent. Every other field you set per form as Required, Optional or Hidden:
| Field | By default | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Always required. | Cannot be hidden — without it you would have no way to reply. | |
| Phone | Optional. | |
| Name | Optional. | |
| Company | Hidden. | Useful when you sell to businesses. |
| Message | Optional in the product inquiry, required in the section. | |
| Quantity | Hidden. | Product inquiry only — how many pieces the shopper is interested in. |
When the shopper is signed in to the shop, the form fills in the e-mail, name and phone from their account, and the message is linked to their customer account.
The list of messages
The list shows the newest messages first. Messages cannot be edited — you see them exactly as the shopper sent them.
| Field | What it does | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Received | The date and time it was sent. | |
| Form | “Product inquiry”, or the section heading or the name of your own form. | The product inquiry is named in your language, whatever the language of the shop. |
| Sender | The e-mail, and below it the phone when the shopper filled it in. | Clicking the e-mail opens the message. |
| Customer | The name, when a signed-in customer sent the message. | The link opens the detail in Customers. A dash = a message sent without signing in. |
| Message | The beginning of what the shopper wrote, and the product for an inquiry. | The full text is in the detail. |
| Shop | The shop the message came from. | “Deleted shop” means the shop (its access key) has been deleted since; the message stays. |
You can search by e-mail, phone, product name, form name and the text the shopper wrote. With more than one form, the list can be narrowed to one (the numbers next to them show how many messages each form has); with more than one shop, to one shop too.
The message detail
Clicking a row opens the whole message:
| Part | What it shows | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Filled-in details | The e-mail, the phone and every other field of the form, with the full text. | Fields the shopper left empty are not stored. |
| Customer | The name and e-mail of the signed-in customer and the View customer profile link. | “Sent without signing in to the shop” = the shopper was not signed in. |
| Product | For an inquiry, the product the shopper asked about and the selected variant (its code). | The link leads to the product while it is in the catalogue. If you delete it, the name stays with “The product is no longer in the catalogue”. |
| Where it came from | The shop, the page the shopper sent the form from, and the shop language. | |
| Technical details | The sender’s IP address and browser. | Helpful when you suspect the form is being abused. |
Deleting a message
A message can only be deleted permanently — in the list with the bin icon in its row, in the detail with Delete permanently. The message is deleted with everything the shopper wrote in it, the IP address and the browser included. This cannot be undone.
Only the Admin role can delete. Editors and Viewers see the messages, but get no delete button. Roles are set in Team.
When you delete a customer account, its messages stay, they are just no longer linked to the account. The messages of a deleted shop stay too.
Protection against spam
The form in the shop has a hidden field only a bot fills in — Monokaido drops such a message and it never reaches the list. From one IP address it accepts at most ten messages in 15 minutes; it refuses more with a “Too many attempts” notice.
I sent the form in the builder preview, but it is not in the list.
The builder preview stores nothing — you can try the form there, the thank you message included, but the message goes nowhere. Send a real message from the shop.
Do I get an e-mail when a new message arrives?
Not yet. Check the Contact forms list for new messages.
I do not see the inquiry form on the product page.
The form shows only in a shop on Storefront v2 with catalog mode on, and only once you switch it on in the shop design (Design → Inquiry form → Show the inquiry form) and publish the design.
Can a shopper send a message while the shop sells normally?
Yes, through the Contact form section on the home page. Only the product inquiry needs catalog mode.