A Guide to the Perfect Contact Page
Almost every website needs a contact page, including an e-commerce website. Why? The answer is two-fold.
Firstly, it’s important to allow people to contact you if they need to. An FAQs page can’t solve everything and if there’s a problem with no way to receive further help, it could prevent a sale and stop people from recommending you in the future. And let’s not forget, it may not just be customers that want to get in touch. The media may want to feature you or someone may be looking for a job with you.
Secondly, it’s about trust. If you’ve got an address, email, contact number or a combination of all three, you’re being more transparent and approachable, which everyone loves. People are a lot more likely to trust your business if they know they can get in touch and even hold you accountable, as every good business should be.
In this guide, we’ll help you cover every angle, so you can craft the perfect contact page.
Make it obvious
Before we even talk about the contact page, you need to make sure it’s easy to navigate to. Choose a website design that has the contact page one or two clicks away. If it’s too difficult to get in touch, people might just be tempted to hit that cross button at the corner of the page instead – or worse, visit a competitor!
Consider the purpose of your contact page
You may want to consider the structure and content of your contact page, to ensure that it serves the right purpose. Is your page only intended for customer queries, or does it need more?
If you’re offering a live chat, you’ll only require a name and perhaps an email address to follow up. If you’re unable to respond to messages straight away, you may need a contact form so people can email you with their issue. Do you need a separate contact section for people who aren’t customers?
Offer multiple options
You need to be as accommodating as possible for your customers (or anyone else interested in contacting you), and this includes your contact page. Different people tend to have different contact preferences. For example, the younger generations typically prefer chatbots, email or live chat, whereas older generations may prefer to call. There’s also a growing trend of using social media for getting in touch. If you’re on social media (you should be!) then link your profiles under the contact details. By offering more than one way to get in touch, you’ll help people more.
Answer as many questions beforehand
The key to an efficient contact page is to answer as many questions as possible before the customer calls, sends an email or messages your chatbot. The best way to do this is with an FAQs page. FAQs can massively reduce the amount of queries you receive. It turns a bombardment into a more easily manageable workload. And this works for reducing social media enquiries as well.
Another method of avoiding the bombardment is to provide an order tracking functionality. This means that customers can track where their orders are without having to ask you for an update.
Stunning but simple
There’s nothing wrong with having a good looking contact page design. In fact, websites that are more creative are more likely to be memorable and provide a positive experience. The key is to make it simple at the same time. We’d recommend saving any complex animations or other flashy elements for other pages… or at least away from the contact form. Focus on being creative in ways that don’t complicate the contact process. It allows the user to easily get in touch and avoids potential abandonment.
Say thank you!
It’s important to say thank you to your customers for getting in touch, so be sure to create a page that says this, once the contact form is completed. It lets the customer know you’ve got their message and gives you another chance to be creative with your page if you wish to.
In addition, a thank you page can assist with website tracking. If you’ve set up analytics, you’re able to see how many people viewed your thank you page URL, meaning you’ve got a near-accurate figure* of how many people submitted a form.
*There may be instances where someone refreshes the page or types in the URL manually.
Don’t stop there
It’s important to provide a positive user experience across your e-commerce site. Every aspect of it needs attention if you’re going to succeed. If you’re just getting started with your website, we’ve also written guides on how to write an About page and how to write an FAQs page.
