Spam emails from your Shopify store’s contact form can be frustrating. These useless messages clutter your inbox and make it harder to manage genuine customer inquiries. Fortunately, there are several effective ways to reduce or eliminate empty contact form spam in your Shopify store. In this guide, we’ll explore practical solutions to keep your inbox clean and your customer communication efficient.
Why Do Shopify Stores Get Contact Form Spam?
Spammers often use bots to target online forms, sending fake or empty messages to collect emails, promote services, or even attempt phishing attacks. Shopify contact forms, especially those without anti-spam measures, are easy targets for such automated spam bots.
Effective Ways to Prevent Empty Contact Form Spam
1. Enable Shopify’s Built-in Google reCAPTCHA
Shopify provides a built-in Google reCAPTCHA feature to help filter out bots from submitting empty or spammy messages. Here’s how to enable it:
- Go to your Shopify Admin Panel.
- Navigate to Settings > Customer Accounts.
- Under Spam Protection, enable Google reCAPTCHA for forms.
This simple step can block a significant amount of automated spam while keeping the form user-friendly for real customers.
2. Use a Third-Party Contact Form App with Spam Protection
Shopify’s default contact form is basic and lacks advanced spam filtering. Consider using a third-party contact form app like:
- Form Builder by HulkApps
- POWR Contact Form
- Easy Contact Form
These apps offer features like honeypots, CAPTCHA, email validation, and submission restrictions to prevent spam.
3. Add a Required “Message” Field
One of the easiest ways to block empty spam messages is to require a message field with a minimum character limit. If a bot tries to submit an empty form, the validation will block it.
If you’re using Shopify’s default contact form, you can modify it by editing the contact.liquid file in your theme:
<label for="message">Your Message</label>
<textarea name="contact[body]" id="message" required minlength="10"></textarea>
This ensures that users must enter at least 10 characters before submitting the form.
4. Implement a Honeypot Field
A honeypot is an invisible field that only bots can see. When a bot fills out this field, your system detects it as spam and blocks the submission.
You can manually add a honeypot field in contact.liquid:
<input type="text" name="extra_field" style="display:none;">
Then, modify your theme’s JavaScript to reject any form submissions where this field has a value.
5. Block Spam Email Domains
Some spam emails come from specific domains. You can use Shopify's filtering tools or third-party apps to block common spam email addresses like:
@mail.ru@example.com@spamdomain.com
Apps like CleanTalk Anti-Spam allow you to create a blocklist of known spam emails.
6. Use Custom Code to Validate Submissions
If you're comfortable with coding, you can add custom validation to prevent empty form submissions.
Example using JavaScript:
document.getElementById('contactForm').addEventListener('submit', function(e) {
var message = document.getElementById('message').value.trim();
if (message.length < 10) {
e.preventDefault();
alert('Please enter a valid message.');
}
});
This script prevents submission if the message field contains fewer than 10 characters.
Final Thoughts
Empty contact spam emails can be annoying, but with the right strategies, you can significantly reduce them. By enabling Google reCAPTCHA, using third-party contact form apps, adding message validation, and implementing honeypots, you can keep your Shopify store's inbox spam-free.
Want more Shopify store optimization tips? Stay tuned for more expert advice from EstoreMakers!
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