Design tips for when designing a company’s contact us page
When thinking about how you want your brand-new company website to look, well, often a lot of thought tend to goes into the homepage, the main pages and the product page design, which is of course important.
However, after those long meetings, endless cups of coffee, and telephone calls to get the design just right, there’s some pages which we think here at this web design agency are given less consideration by some design companies.
Those pages tend to be the “contact us” page, however, we simply think this is often a large mistake, and we shall explain why we think that’s so.
Often when a shopper lands on your companies website, they will spend a lot of time on the homepage, then they will narrow down to the exact service, or the product that they want.
Then after that, its normally the “contact us” page that gets viewed, as the shopper might want to know say where exactly your store is in Cardiff?
They might want to know your companies phone number, or e-mail address, so they can ask a question.
Now, its at this stage where some businesses can lose that shopper, for example, let’s say you run a solicitors practice, you have a simply great location, your right in the centre of Cardiff, and because your offices are impressive, there’s a large picture of the tower block, then below it a simple “contact us” via a contact us form– all well and good, right?
Well, here’s the thing, what if the customer just wanted your e-mail address, so they could say copy and paste it over to their Microsoft Outlook account?
And, what if the design of the website doesn’t include e-mail addresses, there’s just contact us forms?
What if the contact us forms are just really long, there’s some questions that the customer just doesn’t have the time to answer, such as “how did you hear about our company” or “what’s your phone number” and the customer might not to provide their contact details, so we think its better to make it as easy as possible for shoppers to contact you.
Click to call
When a customer contacts a business, it might be on the move, so anything you can do to make it easier for them to call your business will be beneficial.
So, for example, put yourself in your customers shoes, let’s say the you run a solicitor’s practice in Cardiff.
If the person is looking to contact your business, and you have your company phone number clearly stated on the contact page, so that it can be clicked on, and smart phone can then bring that number, then you are making it easier to contact your business.
This might sound common sense, you have to compare this with some websites, which only state that company phone number in the header of the website.
Company phone number may therefore be listed next to say the company’s email address designed in such a way so that it is embedded into the header so that it cannot be clicked upon.
Our designers think it’s far better that it is added to the contact page, so they can be clicked on, and then the customer can choose to ring the business.
The company address standsout
make the company address standout, state the company’s address in plaintext, so that it can be copy and pasted so that somebody can find directions.
You might also wish to add a picture of the street, so for example if you are in a instantly recognisable location, such as near Cardiff Castle, or perhaps your own restaurant overlooking the bay in Cardiff Bay, perhaps you even the premises near Newport Road, you might want to put a picture of the street where your business is located, so somebody can instantly recognise where you are based.
If you have multiple locations, making easy to select each store.
A lot of businesses will have multiple locations, therefore you might want to use the drop-down box locator.
Therefore the customer can select the location, and instantly the page changes so that stores address and contact details.
This is as opposed to listing the addresses and contact details one after the other which might seem quite lengthy if you have quite a few locations.
Add an email address
some businesses only have a contact us form, that is embedded into the page and might have a spam filter.
This is all well and good, but you do have to bear in mind that some customers will still like to copy and paste, that copy and paste the email address into their email account.
You may therefore wish to add the full email address to the contact us page
When somebody’s got to the contact us page, they are at the stage where they want to email or perhaps call the business or even find its address.
Somebody might have a question such as, do you have any availability for a table on Friday night?
Might view the contact us page, like your business, but pull off contacting you to a later date.
If your business happy employees, then you might wish to have a chat box, is the letting personally that page, you might wish to quickly type a message to instead.
Adding this additional way that is a customer can contact you, might allow more customers to quickly contact your business that might otherwise have just left the website without making a booking or purchase.
And a link to a frequently asked questions page
Often customers will ask businesses the same sort of questions, such as what is your returns policy, what hours you will put and also question such as how long the product is guaranteed for.
Obviously, responding to these enquiries takes time, therefore takes up your customer service staffs resources as well.
This is why you might wish to work with your web designers, so that on certain pages, on your company website, such as the contact page might want to have a link to a frequently asked questions page.
This where your customers can find answers to questions, and they may therefore not need to contact you, saving both the company and the customer time.
Add detailed directions
You might wish to add a link on the contact us page, so that you can add step-by-step instructions to your businesses location.
For example, you might be in a central location within Cardiff, and a lot of your customers come to you from the train station for meetings.
You may therefore wish to add directions to help your customers find you, for example directions from the train station, directions from the airport directions from local taxi rank.
Make the contact form easy-to-use
Make your contact form very easy-to-use, we have seen some businesses may contact forms which are very long detailed, this might help the business to better understand what the customer wants to know, but also you have to put yourself again in the customers shoes think that this might deter them from contacting you if they have got the time to fill in the form.
Direct emails to the right person
Even if you run a small business in Cardiff, that say just have three employees, so website might be designed so that all of the emails just go into one central inbox.
However you might find that it saves you time, different enquiries to be directed straight to different staff members.
For example, a question about high-value products might be directed that one member of staff, simply enquiries might be directed at another member of staff, returns to another member of staff.
Therefore, you are not waiting for somebody to sort central inbox, to direct the mail to the relevant person. This may therefore help you to save time, rather than having to redirect messages internally within your business.
Provide an estimate for how long it will take to get back to the customer
When somebody is shopping for a product, it might send a question to your business, for example somebody was purchasing a high-value electric mountain bike, may want to know the guarantee period on a particular bike.
Now if you send out an automated email, saying that you aim to respond to all enquiries within 24 hours, customer in some instances might be willing to wait for your response.
If they have no idea of how long it takes a business to get back to them, they might continue that week shopping around the same bike and might purchase elsewhere.
Therefore, providing a timescale for how long it normally takes you to get back to the customer with a response therefore you might be deemed as offering better service.
How our design company can help:
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