Along with the About Us page, your Contact Us page is one of
the most important and crucial pages on your site to get right. In fact, the
Contact Us page could be considered the absolutely most important page. Even if
the rest of your site succeeds in the goals, if visitors fail to find the
information they need to contact you then you will bring their shopping
experience to a screeching halt.
Shoppers are often hampered if they don’t feel they can get
a hold of a real person or are limited in their contact options. With all other
areas of the site working, a bad contact us page may cause someone to think
twice about purchasing with you altogether.
Accessibility
Visitors must be able to find a link to your Contact Us page
easily and obviously from all pages of your site. They should not have to hunt
to find your contact information.
Contact
options
Provide multiple options for contacting you including phone,
fax, email and web form. Live support can also be valuable. While you may want
to direct the options toward what is most convenient for you, not providing a
contact option most convenient for your visitors can be a mistake.
Contact
points
Larger sites should provide contact information for all
major departments such as customer service, tech support, inquiries, general
info, memberships, job apps, billing, etc. You might even want to include
contact options for specific individuals such as CEO, SFO, etc.
Map and
hours
If you deal more with local business rather than national,
your hours of operation should be included along with a map pinpointing your
location. This certainly won’t hurt national businesses either.
No
advertisements
Your contact page should be free of ads, both for your own
as well as other products/services. This page should maintain as limited focus
as possible.
Web
form
Your web contact form should require as little information
as is necessary. Don’t use this as a survey. Just the bare necessities should
be requested.
Your Contact Us page should not be complicated. In fact,
simple is better. Provide the information that your visitors need and provide
as many contact options as you can to cover your bases. This will ensure an
effective contact us page that provides assurances to your visitors as they
move through the conversion process.
Stoney deGeyter runs a leading search engine marketing business with a small team of seasoned Reno SEO and marketing experts. Stoney pioneered the concept of Destination Search Engine Marketing which is the driving philosophy on how Pole Position marketing helps their clients succeed.
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