Most businesses and site owners see a Contact us page as a page where you drop a form so that when people have inquiries, they can connect with you. Such people have the all famous contact us page that looks like the one below.
While it is not evil or wrong to have a contact page that looks like that, it is important to note that your contact page can do more.
See it as the equivalent of a receptionist’s office. You can do so much more with it that just collect inquiries, you can use it to make people understand a little more about you by adding some more brief information that portrays your business philosophy.
Basically, you can have the following information on your contact page, and while you don’t have to use all, you only need to pick the ones that will make the contact page visitor have an understanding of your philosophy.
CONTACT FORM
The contact form is the most important part of a contact us page and is often the only element that resides in the page in most cases.
The contact form will contain at least three of the following fields:
- Name
- Email Address
- Phone Number
- Reason for Contact
- Message
Asides all of this, it is often good practice to include a catch phrase at the very top of the contact for to help build a level of trust. Phrases like, “Send us a message and we will get back to you soon” could d make the site visitor feel more interested in contacting you since he/she will see that you have said you will respond to inquiries in a prompt manner.
It is also good to have a very positive and/or fun notification to let form users know that their form has been submitted. Notifications like “Thank You, your message has been received, a copy of this email has been sent to you” is also a good way of letting the form user see how organized and/transparent you are.
ADDRESS SECTION
While you are trying to get them to give you some of their contact information, it is also good to let them see that you have made your contact for open to them and placing this information side by side to the information you are requesting on the contact form has a subtle effect of making the form user trust you.
You can also add a google Maps widget on your contact us page so that any local will find it easy getting to your office should they want to.
OPT-OUTS
The opt-outs are the options that you are giving your page visitor should they decide they are done submitting the form or even if they decided not to fill the form.
There are two basic opt-outs that you need and those are social media and your blog posts.
You might choose to have three to four of either your most recent or most popular content below the form. This has the capability to help you portray yourself or business as an authority.
While you are having the blog posts below your form, you will want to have your social media accounts at the top of your contact form and even offer a more compelling call to action like “reach out on social media, we reply mostly within the hour”
I am certain that if you follow the tips suggested based on the peculiarities or what you or your business are representing, you will notice an increase in the number of connections that you can leverage on.
