5 Important Tips for Creating an Effective Contact Page
For some people (not pointing any fingers), designing a contact us page is means plopping a generic form on a page and calling it a day.
We spend a lot of time and energy figuring out the content and design for our home pages and services pages on our websites. And we should spend this time. These are often the first pages of our website that visitors will see.
But we shouldn’t neglect the contact page. This is actually one of the most important pages on our websites. It’s often the final page that your potential client sees and where they make the decision to contact you or leave your website forever.
So how do you create a contact page that will get you more leads? Here are 5 simple tips to help you make your page more user friendly and effective.
1 - Test Your Form
Okay, this might seem like an obvious one, but I’m pretty sure we’ve all encountered a contact form that didn’t work out there in the wilds of the internet. Or, the form might work but the information is being sent to the wrong email!
Try out your form and check for any error messages. If that’s fine, make sure the form results are going to the correct email. This is really important to check if you have a Squarespace website. The default address on your forms will be the email you use for your account which may not be your preferred email. You’ll also want to check any lists or storage you’ll be using for your mailing lists to make sure everything has connected.
Your thank you message or page redirect are important to check as well!
2 - Let Visitors Know What to Expect
“When will I hear back from you? Is it even worth it to fill out this form?”
Let your website visitors know when you’ll get back to them. Is it 1-2 business days? 24 hours? And make sure this is a timeline that you can meet. You don’t want your first interaction to be a disappointment.
You may also want to post your business hours and time zone on your contact page, so visitors know what a business day is for you.
3 - Give Visitors an Alternate Way to Contact You
You’ve added a great contact form to your website. Tested it. Made sure everything was working properly.
But an update just went through and broke everything!
Now your visitors are getting an error message when they try to use your form.
This kind of situation unfortunately, can and does happen with tech. Does anyone remember the big Crowdstrike outage of 2024 that affected businesses worldwide? It crashed a ton of computers and even grounded airplanes. This was all caused by a simple update.
So how will your visitors get in touch with you? And what about those visitors that just hate using forms?
The easy answer is to make sure you’ve added an alternate way to contact you on the page. That could be an email address, phone number, links to your social media accounts, or all of the above.
If you are a brick and mortar store you should also include your address and a map showing your location.
4 - Keep Your Form Fields to a Minimum
You’ve created a form that will give you all the information you want and need from your potential client. Well, that’s great, but no one is going to fill it in.
Why?
Your form is way too long. Your visitor looked at the form, got overwhelmed and left your website.
Think about what information you really need to know and add only those fields into your form. The rest of the information can be gathered through emails, a discovery call or another form later in your process.
This is the first step that people are taking with you so make it simple and quick.
5 - Make Your Contact Page Easy to Find
Because your contact page is so important, it needs to be easy to find. Don’t make your visitor go hunting through your website or down to the footer to find your contact page.
Your contact page should be in your main (or top) navigation. You could even turn it into a button to have it stand out more. Naming the link Contact or Contact Us, will also be less confusing than adding a more unique label.
Remember, you want people to get in touch with you, so make it as quick, easy and understandable for them as possible!
