Validate Form Fields with Regex

If leads in WhatConverts contain inaccurate or improperly formatted data, such as invalid email addresses or placeholder text in phone number fields, the issue is typically that your form fields are not validating input before submission. WhatConverts honors the HTML5 pattern attribute, which means you can use Regular Expressions (Regex) to prevent the form from submitting until a field matches a defined format. This article explains how to implement Regex validation to improve lead data quality.

Form fields are accepting inaccurate or incorrectly formatted input

Marking a field as required ensures it is not left blank, but it does not guarantee the data entered is valid. Without Regex validation, users can submit fields with placeholder text, incorrect formats, or spam content, all of which WhatConverts will capture as lead data.

How to add Regex validation to a form field

To troubleshoot this issue:

1. Open your website's HTML and locate the <input> tag for the field you want to validate.
2. Add the pattern attribute to the field along with the required attribute to ensure the field cannot be skipped.
3. Use the appropriate Regex pattern for your validation goal. See the common patterns below.
4. Test the form by entering incorrectly formatted data and confirming the browser prevents submission until the input matches the required pattern.
5. Submit a correctly formatted test lead and verify the data appears accurately in your WhatConverts Lead Manager.

Example: Validating an email address field

<input type="email" name="email" pattern="^[a-zA-Z0-9.!#$%&'*+/=?^__{|}~-]+@[a-zA-Z0-9-]+(?:.[a-zA-Z0-9-]+)" required>

Common Regex patterns for lead field validation

Use the following patterns to address the most frequent lead data quality issues:

Related Topics

• Track Web Forms Automatically with the Form Finder
• Track Web Forms Manually
• Track Web Forms in iFrames