Designing A Website Contact Page That Drives Sales
The contact page is often an afterthought for businesses when they are creating their website. Obviously, the home page is important because you need to capture people’s attention and encourage them to explore the site further. Likewise, the product pages need to be excellent so you can boost your conversion rate and encourage people to make a sale. But the contact page is equally as important, if not more so, than any other page.
It’s a mistake to think that you can just make a quick page with a phone number and an email address and leave it at that. Unless you put some time and effort into your contact page, you are missing out on some great opportunities to connect with customers and push them towards a sale. Read on to find out more about why contact pages are so important and how you can improve yours.
Why Is Your Contact Page So Important?
Your contact page can benefit your business in a number of different ways, so it’s vital that you put some thought into it. These are some of the big reasons why your contact page should be a priority.
It generates qualified leads
Firstly, your contact page helps generate leads. Say, for example, somebody ends up on your website through a Google search and they have some questions about your product. If they can easily find a phone number or email address on your contact page, they will get in touch with their inquiries. This gives you an opportunity to sell to them and hopefully close the deal. But even if you don’t get them to convert immediately, you’ve already started a dialogue with them and they have already invested time in your business. You also have their contact details, so you’ve got a great qualified lead that you can contact in the future.
A good contact page will organically generate inbound leads, which are far more effective in terms of the time that you invest versus the end result because you let the customer come to you instead of chasing them.
It gives you legitimacy
It’s easier than ever to find information about a business, which is good because there are a lot of scammers out there. People don’t want to hand their credit card details over to a random company without checking them out first, and your contact page is a good place to start. If you just have an email and nothing else, that looks suspicious and you may lose sales. But if you have a phone number and an address, this gives the customer a way to check that you are who you say you are. This builds trust with the customer and makes them far more likely to make a purchase.
It improves local SEO
Your contact page can help to improve your page rankings for local search. By including a local phone number and address, you tell Google where your business is located and which areas you serve. When people make searches with a relevant city or state in them and the Google algorithm scans websites, your site is far more likely to rank higher on the results if you have a detailed contact page.
It helps customers find you
If your business operates out of a physical location and customers need to visit you, having a contact page with an address and a detailed map is so important, especially if people often have trouble finding you. The last thing you want is to lose potential sales because people get their directions wrong. Having a clear location on your contact page is also another way to prove to customers that you are a legitimate business.
If you don’t have a well designed contact page with all of the relevant information, it can negatively impact your business in a number of ways, so make sure you prioritize it.
How To Build The Perfect Contact Page
People assume that building a contact page is easy. All you need to do is add an extra page to the site with an address, phone number and email, right? Actually, there’s more to it than that and if you want a contact page that actually drives sales, make sure to do the following crucial things.
Use the right phone number
The phone number that you use on your contact page makes a big difference and if you want people to call, it’s important to use a national number. If you use a local number, certain customers may be charged an extra fee depending on where they are in the country. However, calling 1300 numbers costs the same regardless of where you are in the country, which is better for the customer. You can redirect this number to your own local number, but you should use a 1300 number on your site if you want to generate more leads.
Use a contact form
Putting your email address on your website is an option, but it’s likely that you will end up with mountains of spam if you do. When your email is in the public domain, it will soon be added to all sorts of email lists and that means that the relevant emails from customers will get lost amongst all of the junk. Not only is frustrating for you and your employees, but it also slows down response times for customers.
The good news is, you can get around that problem by using a contact form instead of your email address. There are a lot of great benefits of using a contact form aside from the fact that it drastically reduces spam. It’s a lot easier for the customer to contact you because they can do it right there on the website instead of coming off the site and opening a separate email account. Making it easier for them means that people are far more likely to take the time to contact you. It also makes life easier for you when trying to organize and manage customer queries. You will be notified every time somebody fills out the contact form, so you don’t need to worry about accidentally missing a message because it was picked up by the spam filter. You can also give people a choice of categories that their query fits into to make it simpler to manage and identify which ones are more urgent.
Your contact form is a great way to build your email list too. A lot of people don’t bother to sign up if the subscription process is long winded. However, you can put a simple checkbox on the bottom of your contact form asking people if they want to opt in. They’ve already put their details in so they are far more likely to subscribe when you make it that easy.
Provide clickable links
This seems incredibly obvious but a lot of businesses forget to do it when designing their website. Remember that a lot of people are going to access the site on mobile, so making your phone number a clickable link means that they only need to press a few buttons to call you. If you make them type out the whole number, you’re creating extra work for them and they’re less likely to get in touch. Remember, it’s all about making it as easy as possible for people to contact your business.
If you decide not to use a contact form and you are going to provide an email address, make sure that this is a clickable link as well. If people can open their email software with the click of a button, they save a lot of time.
Add social media buttons
Giving your customers options is crucial and you need to remember that a lot of people prefer to engage with businesses on social media instead of calling or emailing them. But it’s not very convenient if they have to go onto social media and manually search for your business if they want to get in touch. Adding some social media buttons on your contact page solves this issue and helps to boost your follower count in a big way.
Keep it simple
Your contact page is a functional page, so it’s important that you keep it simple. Cutting back on clutter is one of the most important rules of professional web design and it’s incredibly important when it comes to your contact page. Customers are already interested if they are trying to contact you, so don’t waste space with things like product photos etc. Instead, present them with a range of contact options in a simple, clear format so they can find the information they need immediately.
Add a condensed version on page banners
If you want to improve the user experience on your website and generate more leads, you should include a condensed version of your contact page on your page banners. Having your phone number and social media buttons at the top or bottom of every page means that people don’t need to search around your site as much. They can still use the contact page if they need more options but if they just want to give you a quick call or follow you on social media, it’s right there in front of them.
You should never underestimate the importance of a good contact page on your website. If you stick to these simple tips, you can build one that generates leads and drives sales