Create a Great Contact Page

For our final installment in our series on How to Create and Write a Great Website, we’ll cover your Contact page. While all of the other pages of your site, including Home, Services, About and Bonus, help tell the story of your business, your Contact page should make it easy for your dream audience to take action and reach out.

What Makes A Great Contact Page?

Contact pages of the past were more of an afterthought. They consisted of an address, a phone number and maybe a map. Those are still essential elements, but these days, you can use this opportunity to continue the courting process. A well-planned Contact page lets your brand voice come through and reminds website visitors what you’re all about and why they’re here.

Your Contact page should still be thoughtful and speak directly to your audience. It should also collect the information you need to know about a potential client or customer, but not be overwhelming. That way, when you do talk to them on the phone or correspond via email, you have enough background information to speak thoughtfully about whatever it is they’re contacting you about.

We typically like to call this page “Get Started,” “Get In Touch” or “Work With Me,” because these titles are action-oriented. But if your business has a physical address that your clients will visit, "Contact" or “Contact Us” works, too.

An engaging Contact page is extremely important when it comes to landing clients. Just like elsewhere on your site, the content on this page should be friendly and memorable, so that visitors associate your business with a positive feeling. Of course, it should be written like the rest of your site, too. If your brand voice is informal, let that come through. If you’re more buttoned up, keep it professional.

Start this page with some brief introductory text. (See the DesignGood contact page as an example.) This text is yet another opportunity to use some search-friendly language. For example, “To learn more about the leadership training options we can offer your company…” Use a couple of sentences to reiterate why someone would want to get in touch, and build some excitement around doing so.

Further down, your Contact page can include your business address and map, hours of operation, your phone number and an email address or email icon, in addition to a contact form. If it’s relevant to your business, you can use this page to give your clients the option to schedule a call or an initial consultation.

We like giving clients a few ways to reach out based on personal preference. Some users will  commit to scheduling a call or appointment while they’re on your site, while others will want to fill out a form and have you reach out to them. For us at DesignGood, this is really a 50/50 split. We’re all about meeting clients where they are, so we offer both options. If you’re looking for scheduling software, we like Acuity, and there are lots of other great options out there like Callendly, Schedulista and Booker.

You’ll also want to let your website visitors know who they’ll be hearing from when they reach out. If you’ll be replying directly, you can use your call to action to say“ Contact me” and tell them “I’m looking forward to talking with you!” If you’ve got a team, you may want to give your site visitors the option to reach out to specific team members.

This is also a good place to explain to your potential clients or customers what happens next. Include a few sentences telling them when and how they’ll hear from you. This will set expectations around your processes and how long it may take for you to respond. By replying within that time frame, you start building trust.

Your Contact Form

Of course, many businesses benefit from including a contact form on this page. This can be a real time-saver because it allows you to collect important information from prospects before following up with them.The standards fields on this form are typically:

• Name
• Email Address
• Phone Number
• Business Name and Business Website URL (if you work with businesses)
• Message

If it’s relevant, you can ask site visitors to share their company name, website, the time frame for a project and how they heard about you. And if you work with multiple client segments, you can also include a form field that lets them identify what audience segment they represent. (For example, I am a student/individual/professional/small business owner/executive, etc.) This helps you understand where they’re coming from and how you might best serve them.

You can also ask a question like “Is there anything else you would like us to know before we talk?”, but be sure to avoid any extraneous questions that really don’t help you or them. This includes your required form fields. Any secondary questions should be optional, especially if there’s a chance they could cause your visitor to skip completing the form. You want to keep your Contact page as simple and easy to use as possible.

This is also a great place to ask customers again to subscribe to your mailing list. If this is something you have in your footer, there’s no need to repeat it. However, you can always ask people when they fill out your form if they would also like to be added to your mailing list!

The Finishing Touches: The Footer

The footer is the band of info that appears at the bottom of your website. Because it’s on every page, it’s highly visible, and while they may also seem like an afterthought, footers actually get a lot of attention. Naturally we scroll to the bottom of a page if we can’t find what we’re looking for in the main navigation. That’s why it’s important to make sure your footer includes content that helps your visitors get where they want to go. A footer almost always includes the following elements:

• Social media icons
• A link to the Contact page
• A link to the privacy policy (If you use WordPress to build your website, WordPress will generate a privacy policy for you.)
• Email signup
• A repeat of the navigation

Depending upon the length of your Contact page, you may also want to include a block of social media icons further up the page to make it easy on your visitors to find you on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or LinkedIn — or any other social channels you might use. With these elements in place, your website visitors will have all the information they need to reach out and make contact.

Are you working on your website? Need more guidance? DesignGood can help you create a great website for your business and build your brand. Schedule a call with Kristin to learn how we can help your business succeed through effective and beautiful branding and design.