I am designing a tell a friend tool for our website and I am stuck.
The script is allowing the user to import his own contacts and to mass send an invitation. For some (SPAM and quota) reasons we do allow sending max of 30 invitation per hour.
Adding contacts one by one is not a problem, we let user know, that more than 30 contacts are not permitted....
but importing contacts is tricky... most users do have 100+, some even 1.000+ contacts. How do I present this? Do I import only first 30 contacts? the problem is I do have just email and a name for a contact, so the only filter I can offer a user is by first letter
edit:
Ok, sorry I was not clear with the image, here is the translated version. the fields are not for filtering or searchig but for adding contacts manually....
If I would have had search filters/inputs ...it would be bad. I don't wan't to loose user's interest... a user should be able to send as many invitations as possible with few clicks...making him work for each contact would be bad....
Right now I am thinking of solving the problem as shown on the second image... by giving the user the option to import a list of contacts by "page" (first 30, second 30, etc...)...all the contacts are "checked" (becoem recipients) when imported... and the user is given the option to remove anyone from the list if wanted... rather than check one by one in.
have better ideas?
I believe you should have one input field and the search should be done on name and email both and first few records should be fetched. Once a user is selected that should remain fixed and search should be continued for remaining contacts.