Wix Web Designer Tip: Wix Forms - Replying to Notifications

As a Wix Web Designer, I always train my clients how to use the WIx platform better for website updates, blogging, customer management, email newsletters, SEO, and more.

In the past year, Wix released Ascend, which is a new customer management system that works with their Wix Forms, which are easy to customize forms that can be easily added to any Wix website. The forms are great, and the tool is great, however – now that they have released Ascend, Ascend disrupts the communication between the website owner and customer and the email correspondance comes from WIX emails, not the website owner. This is easy to work around IF you know better, however, it can be confusing and many clients don't realize they're emails are going through the Wix Ascend email system when "replying" to a form submission email notification.

What happens: When a Wix Form gets submitted now, the website owner will get an email from Wix (from an email like no-reply+bc71437d525X@crm.wix.com). See below example:

This above notification email has all the customer's info they submitted on the website form.

Don't click on the "Respond Now" blue button or Reply to this Email Notification! My advice to my Wix website design clients: Don't "reply" directly or click on “Respond Now” from the Wix email notification, otherwise it will go through the Wix system and the customer will get email corresponance from Wix's email address, NOT from your (business owner) email. Instead, click on the customer's email and/or copy and paste their email into a new or message. This way, it will come directly from your email (as it should) and not go through the Wix Ascend system.

What happens if you click on Respond Now? IF you click on "Respond Now" or click "reply" directly from the Wix form notification email, then it will go through Ascend's Inbox. See screenshots below. And if you reply in the Wix Inbox, your customer will get your reply in an email from Wix like reply@crm.wix.com - NOT your email address. It may have your business name as the Name, but the email is a wix email. This is, in my opinion, unprofessional, harder to use, and the wix emails are also more likely to be caught by spam filters. Instead, always click on or copy the customer's email and create a new email to them. This will avoid going through the Wix Ascend system.

The above screenshot is what the email looks like to the customer if you click on "Respond Now" and use the Wix Ascend Inbox to reply to their form submission. I'd advise NOT to use this, and instead email the customer directly from your own email.

In fact, here is my advise to all my Wix Web Design clients for whom I've designed a custom forms using Wix Forms for on their websites:

"Remember, don't "reply" directly or click on “Respond Now” from the Wix email notification, otherwise it will go through the Wix system. Instead, click on the customer's email and/or copy and paste their email into a new or message. This way, it will come directly from your email (as it should) and not go through the Wix Ascend system and go to the customer from a wix email rather than your own."

That said, not all things are bad about Ascend:

Some Perks of Ascend:

I do love the customizable Wix Forms, and that you can setup Submission Tables for use in exporting/backup of your form submissions.

I also love that there is an Inbox that you can cross-check to make sure you didn't overlook any submissions, or to check to make sure your email spam filter is not catching any of the Wix form notifications. It's a nice backup to have. Additionally, you can share access to that inbox with other staff members so they can also followup with customers – ALBEIT not through the Wix Ascend Inbox, but using their own staff emails to correspond with customers.