Business
Business Website Contact Page Best Practices
Are you having issues with capturing leads? The problem might not be with your website as a whole. It might just be the contact us page.
Your contact page provides customers (and potential leads) with an easy way to contact your company. With the correct design elements, you can also use it to humanize your customer service agents.
That means you’ve got to make it easy to find. It can’t do its job of guiding your customers if you hide it. It would help if you also gave customers plenty of ways to get in touch with you.
These are only a few ways to improve your contact page. Check out this quick business website guide to learn more.
Don’t Hide It
The number one rule of good website navigation is don’t force your users to hunt for what they need. This is especially true with your contact us page.
It needs to be front and center either in a header at the top of the webpage or the bottom in a footer. Your header doesn’t have to say “contact us” in bold letters, but you should use common words that mean the same thing. A few good alternatives are “support” or “help.”
Humanize Your Company
Customers want to talk to other people. Not a machine. If they feel like the person on the other end of the screen is a bot, they’re liable to come into the conversation already frustrated.
The best way to ensure customers that an actual person is helping them is to humanize your staff. Some companies accomplish this by including names and headshots on their contact us page.
Make It Simple
Your contact us page doesn’t have to be fancy and complicated. It’s better to keep it simple. Simple means user-friendly.
Every field on your contact form should serve a purpose. In most cases, you’ll only need the customer’s name, email address, and a quick message describing what they need.
Stay away from distracting visuals like dancing animations. All that does is add unnecessary clutter to the page and slow things down.
Of course, the simplicity of your page will vary depending on what type of business you are. For example, if you own a large corporation, you may want to include phone numbers for each of your departments.
Send Customers to the Right Department
If your business has several departments, things can get a little confusing for customers. They could end up contacting the IT department when they needed to get in touch with billing.
Having filters on your contact us page will help make things easier to navigate. These filters will ask a series of specific questions that will narrow things down and send customers to the right place.
Allow for Multiple Contact Methods
Not everyone is comfortable making phone calls. Some would rather email their question to a company or talk to a live chat agent.
If you don’t give your customers these alternative contact options, they will turn to a competitor who does.
So, on your contact us page, include your phone number. This is useful for those who would rather hear a person’s voice than type things out.
Snail mail is a bit old-fashioned, but some people like to mail their payments to a physical address instead of paying with a bank card. If you have a social media page, provide a link to it on your contact page.
Live chatbots can collect essential information from customers and give them quick answers to questions.
Guide Your Customers
Let’s say that a customer needs to change their password. They call and wait forever on the customer service line only to find out that they could have changed it themselves with a few clicks of their mouse. You have instructions that walk customers through the process on your FAQ page.
If you’d provided a link to this information on your contact page, it would have saved the customer a lot of time and frustration.
Include an Address and Map
You’ll have customers that don’t like shopping online. They would rather come to your physical location if you have one.
That’s why you should provide your address along with a map on your contact page. Not only will it help customers find you, but it will also make your business appear more trustworthy. Some view a lack of basic business information like an address as a huge red flag.
Give a Response Timeframe
When someone fills out a contact form, they’re aware that they may not receive a response for a few days. That doesn’t mean they want to be left sitting on their hands.
That’s why you should include a confirmation message that gives them a roundabout timeframe.
Optimize for Mobile
Many people do their internet browsing on their phones, so optimizing your business website for mobile is of the utmost importance.
Be sure to avoid drop-down menus because they don’t play well on mobile. Checkboxes are much easier to work with.
If you’re having trouble, this web design agency can help you get your site ready for mobile users.
Contact Page Ettiquite to Live By
Your contact page is one of the most important things on your website. If you make it difficult to navigate or users can’t find it at all, you’ll lose customers to your competition.
Remember to keep your contact page simple. Consider asking customers specific questions to send them to the right department, and don’t forget to optimize for mobile.
For more website design tips, visit the Digital Marketing section of our blog.