One feature request that we’ve received a few times is for the ability to add multiple columns to a form. You can currently float form fields alongside one another using a little bit of custom css, and we’ll discuss adding multiple columns into the form builder itself, but you might want to take a look at MarketingSherpa’s Email Marketing Benchmark Guide 2007 preview before placing more than one field on a line. The entire report costs $247, but if you take a look at alert #2, you’ll see that the forms built with one field per line are the “winners”, while those with multiple columns are the “losers”.

As Kevin had said before in his article on label placement, “when it comes to filling out a form, you want your users to spend less time understanding your form and more time filling it out.” When fields are top down and predictable, the form often appears less complex and increases the probability that a user completes it.

As we put the finishing touches on the Submit API, you’re going to see a lot more goodness come out at a faster rate thanks to the flexibility and functionality it opens up on our backend. Yesterday, we added some email features to Wufoo that takes advantage of our new system and we think it’s going to do a lot to help enhance and increase the productivity Wufoo provides to your email workflow.

Email Receipts

One of the most exciting (and requested features), we’ve added is the ability to automatically send an email receipt out to your users when they’ve successfully submitted an entry. This is great for invitations, workshop registrations and event planning because now you can send the person filling out your form a copy of additional information you need to send them along with other reminders like directions to the event.

Email Receipts

To begin using receipts, create or edit a form that has an email field and click on the “Form Properties” tab. There, you will see a checkbox to “Send Email Receipt to User.” By checking this, all of the receipt configuration options will open up. You can specify which email field to send it to, what email address you’d like them to reply to and the custom message you’d like to send.

Enhanced Email Workflow

Here’s something for you guys using Wufoo to create Feedback and Support Request forms. While it’s nice to have Wufoo email a copy of each new entry to your Inbox, before yesterday you would have to copy/paste the email address every time you needed to reply to an email — now you can just hit reply thanks the addition of a Reply To: parameter we’ve added to “Email New Entries” in your form’s properties.

General Improvements

We’ve also fixed a number of spacing issues with some mail clients (like Entourage) and improved Wufoo handling of foreign languages in email. There’s still a known issue with some foreign languages in Outlook 2002, but other than that we feel everything is coming along rather nicely. If you find any spacing or character issues, please let us know.

As always, we’re pushing things out as fast as we can. All of these new features have been added to both free and paid accounts so get out there, check them out, and enjoy working with your inbox a little bit more.