There is no doubt about it, we build a lot of websites. Websites for dog groomers, military suppliers, doctors, lawyers, clowns in Mississippi and everything in between. There is one thing they all have in common: they all want a contact us page.
The contact page is of vital importance to the overall success of a website. Make a great “contact us” page and the inquiries will come barreling in. Make a shoddy one, and you’ll be twiddling your thumbs.
A few weeks ago we ran a 5 question survey polling industry experts asking them what are the most important aspects of a contact us page.
We got some great responses from some great people and are happy to share them here:
What are the most essential elements of a contact us page?
This first question we asked was a broad question asking people what was most important. The choices that were given were:
- an email contact form
- phone number
- other phone numbers
- fax
- the business address
- social networks
- live chats
- a live Google Map
When considering how to structure your contact us page, there are a lot of considerations to take when thinking about this. You want to offer as many possibilities to your users as possible, but you also don’t want to be overwhelming, slow your site down, or cause confusion.
At the very least an email contact form is the most essential aspect, always put your phone number on your contact page and it is highly recommended to use your address as well.
Everything else such as “live chat” plugins and a working Google Map is fine, but totally optional.
Where on the website do you expect to see a link to the contact us page?
This next question focuses on where within the website do visitors expect to see a link to the contact us page. Most of the time you’ll see the link in the primary menu, but oftentimes there are other locations. For this question, we only gave 3 options: on the main menu, on the footer, or “other.”
From this we see it is vitally important to have a contact us link on the main menu, and it definitely helps to have it within the footer.
A lot of webmasters and business owners sprinkle the link to the contact page throughout the website in addition to on the main menus.
What are the most essential fields on an email contact form?
We asked our visitors what was the most essential field within a contact form on a contact page. Options given were:
- Name
- Phone
- Address
- Custom Message
- Email Address
From our survey it became evident that most of the fields we suggested were essential, with the exception of “address” which some felt wasn’t very important. Both “name” and “email” fields are vitally important to most of our surveyors. When in doubt, keep it simple. You can always grab this information at a later date or get this information via another program.
How many images should a contact us page have?
This next section focuses on image, and how many images our visitors think contact pages should have. The options were very simple in this case, either 2 or less, or 2 or more. The results were pretty clear: lots of images aren’t a good choice for contact us pages. Visitors want contact pages to be simple.
Visitors probably don’t want a lot of imagery on contact us pages. They are there to make contact with your company, so any added distractions are generally not a good idea.
How much contextual content should a contact us page have?
Lastly, we asked how much contextual content should be on a “contact us” page. We gave 4 options:
- practically none
- less than 200 words
- more than 200 words
- other
The results pointed to the fact that very little content was the popular decision. Many people said that “practically no” content should be on the “contact us” page while the great majority stated that under 200 words was optimal.
Whatever your choice was, it is clear that visitors don’t want to read about your company when they are on your contact us page. They’ve already done that on your website.
The “contact us” page should be reserved for what its purpose is exactly: contacting people. Don’t let images, lots of content, or the latest and greatest widget get in the way of your contact forms. For example here is our contact us page.
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