Tired of combing through the long lists of what you need on a Contact Us page?
Well, I’ve narrowed it down to the only elements you need on your Contact Us page that satisfy what visitors are expecting and need on this page, which is a way to contact you and get their questions answered and problems solved.
The Only 5 Elements You Need on a Contact Us Page
Every way to contact your business
The whole point of a contact us page is to give people a way to get in touch with you. So, the first thing you need on it is every way someone can contact you.
You want to give people options because everyone has different preferred communication methods. Also, people may not want to use your contact form and wait on you to get in touch with them. They may prefer to contact you themselves, which makes clearly communicating contact methods even more important.
Put your business name and logo prominently on the page. Include a short note at the top about contacting you, such as:
“Need to get in touch with us? All of the ways to contact us are below. You can get in touch with us directly, or use our contact form and we’ll get back to you within 24 hours. Can’t wait to connect and give you the support you need!”
Then, get into your different contact methods. List your business phone number and email address. Share your social media handles. Note your physical address as well if you have one, just in case people want to visit you in-person.
It’s also a good idea to tell visitors who to contact for what if you have departments or employees that handle specific issues. They’ll feel more confident that they’re attempts to reach out will actually be successful.
Chewy does a good job of making their contact methods the first thing you see:
A contact form
In case people don’t want to reach out to you directly, they should have an option where they know you’ll get their message and contact them back. Insert contact form here. Visitors can fill it out, press send, and wait on you.
A contact form also makes it easier for you to help the person with what they need. They can specify their exact issue on the form and you can contact them back prepared with a solution.
Keep your contact form simple, with no more than five fields. We suggest the following four:
- Name
- Email address
- Phone number (optional)
- A “what can we help you with?” dropdown list of the most common reasons people contact you, with an “other” option they can type their reason into if it’s not listed
You can also include a checkbox just before the submit button for opting into your marketing emails as well to maximize the results you get from your contact form. Moz, a Seattle-based SEO software company, does a great job with their straightforward contact form:
A FAQ section
Some people don’t fall on your contact us page because they want to get in contact with you. They are there as a last resort because they couldn’t find what they were looking for, and are hoping you might have a help or FAQ section on this page that has the answer to their question.
Give them exactly that: FAQs and links to helpful content and resources. If you have a short list of FAQs, you can probably include them all on your contact us page in a list form.
But if you have a lot of FAQs and help resources, create a separate page for them and link to it on your contact us page. You could make thumbnails for the top three FAQs and then post the link to your FAQs page underneath them. Or, you could keep it simple, like Bark Box did in the below example and just have a button linking to your FAQs page.
As you find out more about what people contact you about, create resources to answer these questions, and add them to your FAQs.
A clear call-to-action (CTA)
CTA, CTA, CTA. You hear it all the time in discussions about what your website pages need and how to get people to take action. Most people may not think so, but your contact us page needs a CTA too.
Your contact us page is a great opportunity to invite visitors to do something else besides get in touch with you, such as sign up for your newsletter, check out your sale products, or follow you on social media.
Don’t overwhelm your visitors with a bunch of CTAs. One is best, two at the max. Choose what action you want people to take wisely. Nothing too heavy, like “Go Buy This.” Signing up for your email list is less pressure and doable for most people.
Put your CTA at the bottom on your contact us page, after you give people what they really want on this page which is contact information. Here’s a great example from OptinMonster to follow:
Your brand’s personality
You might think that a dry contact us page is okay. You put “Need to get in touch with us?” at the top, list your email, phone number, and address, and maybe put a map on there and call it a day.
The problem is this doesn’t really make it easy for people to contact you or make them want to. It dampens the experience with your brand. More importantly, you’re missing out on an opportunity to keep ingraining your brand in people’s brains.
Infusing your brand personality into your contact us page creates a memorable and positive experience for visitors, even on a straightforward page like this one. Look at this example from Omsom:
As simple as their contact page is, it’s bright, colorful, and full of the brand’s personality. You get the contact information you need, while also continuing to get this cohesive visual branding experience that uplifts and puts you in a good mood.
Contact methods need to be primary on this page. But don’t shy away from what your brand is and how you present it.
Do You Need a Contact Us Page?
Yes! The answer is a resounding yes. Every website should have a contact us page because visitors are expecting it. They may have questions, issues, or want to sign up for something they can’t get through your site. So, having a way to contact you is imperative.
Plus, not having a contact us page can be seen as unprofessional and a little sketchy. People might be thinking, “Why would a website not want people to contact them?” and just choose to not continue the purchase or interaction.
At the end of the day, a contact us page builds trust with your visitors and supports a good user experience.
How to Create a Contact Form for Free
If you’re already paying for a website builder, you should be able to create contact forms at no cost. You usually have a good amount of templates and design features to choose from to create a cohesive contact us page using your website building platform.
If you don’t have a website builder and just need to create a stand-alone contact form for free, try a free contact form generator, like Jotform or Zoho.
Both of these platforms allow you to create contact forms for free, but there are some limitations.
Zoho’s free plan is available to one user and you can only create 3 forms. An unlimited amount of people can view the form, but it can only take 500 submissions. Still, you have access to 200 MB file storage and pre-built themes.
Jotform’s free plan lets you create 5 forms for 1 user. You can accept 100 submissions a month with an overall limit of 500 submissions. 1,000 people can view each form monthly. And you can have up to 100 fields on each form (not that you’ll need them).
What Not To Put On Your Contact Us Page
The first thing you shouldn’t put on your contact us page is an overly-complicated design. Yes, we want brand personality. However, we don’t want that “personality” to overshadow the purpose of the page.
Also, an overly-complicated design means complex navigation. The last thing you want is for people to not be able to find the answers they’re looking for. Keep the design simple and use color and visuals to enhance it.
Refrain from putting a lot of text on your contact us page as well. Only the relevant information is necessary: your contact methods, a CTA, a few FAQs if appropriate, and a form.
This may seem like a given, but don’t put any information on there that you can’t truly abide by. For example, don’t promise a response time you realistically can’t guarantee. People would rather know it’ll take you a few days than you guaranteeing a 24-hour response time and not getting back to them for three days.
Finally, avoiding unnecessary form fields is a big one. Visitors will feel like you’re invading their privacy and asking for too much off the top when you have 10 form fields. As a result, they won’t fill out the form and skip contacting you. Maybe even be completely turned off from doing anything with your brand in the future. Keep it simple with five or less fields.
How to Continuously Improve Your Contact Us Page
Like all of your webpages, you should be monitoring the performance of your contact us page. While many people overlook regular monitoring, you shouldn’t, if you really want to get people to use the page.
Whether it’s Google Analytics or your website builder’s built-in analytics program, make sure it’s live on your contact us page to start collecting data on what visitors do.
Then, monitor who visits the page (their demographic information), the actions they take, how long they spend on the page, and how many people leave the page without doing anything.
With this information, you can tailor your contact us page to the type of people who visit it the most. For example, if people of an older age visit your contact page the most, you could put FAQs specific to them on the page vs. general questions.
You can make the actions visitors take the easiest. If they use your contact form a lot, for example, you could move that up on the page so that it’s more prominent.
You can also analyze the bounce rate and draw conclusions about why people only spend a certain amount of time on the page, or leave it without taking action.
Data collection and analysis may not be your favorite thing. But it’s necessary if you want your contact us page to keep getting better.
