Are you missing out on sales because people can't find you?
December 2009
Where is your business, how do customers get in touch with you?
Typically visitors want to know
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who to contact
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how to contact you (email, phone etc)
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when you will get back to them
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your business hours
The "contact us" page is a lifeline for many businesses. One of the simplest, easiest things you can do to encourage communication on your website is to make your contact details easy to find.
Email, fax, telephone or even a letter - each person, each of your customers will have their own personal preference for contact.
How you structure contact information on your website is up to you - you could put your contact details on every page or you could have a prominent link in your menu/navigation that says something simple like "Contact Us". Use a phrase like "Location" or "Info Centre" and you could confuse your website visitor and make them stop and think about how to contact you - in that moment you may lose them, another business like yours is only a click away. Use a phrase that everyone understands like "Contact Us" or "Get in Touch" a phrase so common on the internet that people don't need to think about it and you are the business that receives the lead.
Effective Contact Pages
Many "contact us" pages seem like throwaways, they receive little love and even less effort. Here's what you can do to fix yours:
Prospects don't know who they should contact?
You may do a great job of listing all the different contact numbers, contact info, and corresponding departments but offer very little guidance on which contact option is the best, or even correct, choice.
Put your contact information in the context of visitor need rather than just a list of information.
Contact information invisible or hard to find?
Controlling information requests is an important consideration for many companies, but the answer isn't to hide contact information.
Hiding contact information may eliminate tire kickers, it also leaves you vulnerable to frustrated and angry customers and it robs you of an opportunity to win customers by being more approachable. It's hard to trust a company that doesn't seem to want to talk to you.
You could make your copy encouraging and inviting, place the phone contact information first, followed by links that address common situations in common language.
Contact options limited?
Give customers more control of how to contact you. Provide plenty of options, you could offer:
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a telephone number
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a short form
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internet chat
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an email address
Make sure your website visitors don't become frustrated before they reach out to you - have all your contact details on your website and make them easy to find. This enables more people to communicate with you
- more leads from your website which in turn leads to more sales.