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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.
Discuss this article in the Small Business Ideas forum.
Stoney deGeyter is the President of Pole Position Marketing, a leading search engine optimization and marketing firm helping businesses grow since 1998. Stoney is a frequent speaker at website marketing conferences and has published hundreds of helpful SEO, SEM and small business articles.
If you'd like Stoney deGeyter to speak at your conference, seminar, workshop or provide in-house training to your team, contact him via his site or by phone at 866-685-3374.
Stoney pioneered the concept of Destination Search Engine Marketing which is the driving philosophy of how Pole Position Marketing helps clients expand their online presence and grow their businesses. Stoney is Associate Editor at Search Engine Guide and has written several SEO and SEM e-books including E-Marketing Performance; The Best Damn Web Marketing Checklist, Period!; Keyword Research and Selection, Destination Search Engine Marketing, and more.
Stoney has five wonderful children and spends far too much of his free time watching TV. He is also a master of useless trivia and obscure movie quotes.
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