Can customers figure out how to contact you on your website?
Take a look at your website on your phone and desktop computer. Can people easily find how to contact your business when they are browsing through your website? Or do they have to scroll and scroll to see it buried at the bottom of the site or worse, in a separate page?
Let’s face it. Customers are becoming more and more digitally savvy no matter what their age is. When my dad, who’s in his 70s, is looking for a phone number for a business, the first place he goes is online to look for it on the company’s website. When he can’t find the phone number, he gets frustrated and considers going to a different business where it’s much easier to contact them.
My friend who’s in her 40s, but does not consider herself a ‘techy’ person, is continually using her phone to research online before she goes into the physical store to buy something. Her biggest complaint? When she can’t figure out how to call a business to see if they have something in stock OR when there is no address to show her how to get to the location, she is more likely to go somewhere else.
The point is, your customers are online and if they can’t reach you they may go somewhere else!
Where to put contact information on a website?
Nothing is more frustrating for a website visitor than not being able to quickly find your address, phone number or email on your website.
It’s essential that your contact info is displayed very clearly on the home page of your site, and every page of your website. Better yet, have it appear in different formats – a button that takes people to your contact page, a form that goes directly to your email and text with friendly and precise call-to-action words and phrases such a ‘Call us today’ or ‘Visit our Calgary location.’
The footer area is also a great area to place contact information as people naturally go there to look for it, and it will seamlessly appear on all pages of your site.
Having a separate ‘Contact us’ page is still crucially important, but this should be in addition to having contact information visibly displayed throughout the site. If you rely solely on your contact page, but it is hiding in the menu of your site you could run into problems. Especially on mobile sites – when people are viewing your website on your phone the menu is normally displayed as a ‘hamburger’ menu and visitors may miss it. Missing it leads to one thing – a much higher chance that the website visitor will close your site and search again on your competitor’s site.
That is why it’s so important to place your contact information, even if it’s a phone number or email address, at the top of your site where it is highly visible and makes it super easy for your customer. For inspiration, I enjoyed this article on Hubspot sharing 23 of the best contact pages which also had some sound advice on contact forms and other best practices.
Does your website have contact information throughout?
Being able to contact your business easily is the most vital part of online inbound marketing. Do you think it’s time to add some more visible contact information on your website? It doesn’t take a long time to do and is a nominal investment that will enhance your site tremendously!
