What belongs on a contact page

Reduce the decision

A page offering a form, a phone number, a chat widget, a booking link and a map is asking the visitor to choose a channel before they have said anything. Most people would rather be told.

Lead with one route, make it obvious, and offer the others quietly beneath. Which one leads depends on your trade: urgent work leads with a number, considered work leads with a form.

Our page on contact forms covers the form itself. The page around it is about removing hesitation rather than about fields.

Say which route is fastest. People will use whichever they think will get an answer soonest, and telling them plainly saves the enquiry that arrives on three channels at once.

Say when and how fast

Opening hours, the days you are closed, and how quickly somebody can expect a reply. Those three remove most of the uncertainty that makes people contact three businesses at once.

Then meet what you said. A page promising a same-day reply and delivering one three days later does more damage than a page promising nothing, because the expectation was yours.

Say what happens outside hours as well. An honest note saying messages are read the next working morning is far better than silence, which reads as a business that has stopped.

Tell them what helps

A short line saying what information lets you reply usefully saves a round trip on most enquiries. The address, a photograph, the make and model, when it started, whatever your trade needs.

That also improves the quality of what arrives. People will supply detail when asked and will not volunteer it, and a first message with the detail in it converts faster.

Keep the ask short. Our page on forms that get filled covers why every extra requirement costs completions rather than improving them.

What a contact page needs

The list below is the whole page for most small businesses. Anything beyond it should justify the space it takes from the thing the visitor came to do.

• One primary route, obvious and above the fold
• The other routes, quieter, beneath it
• Hours, including the days you are closed
• How quickly you reply
• What happens after they get in touch
• What detail helps you answer usefully
• The address and how to find you, if visitors come to you

Addresses, maps and privacy

Include a full address in text where customers visit you, and a named service area where they do not, because that is what an answer engine reads out when somebody asks. Our page on coverage pages covers the second case, which many home-based businesses get wrong.

An embedded map is convenient and heavy. A static image with a link to directions loads faster and does the same job, which our page on page speed explains.

We do not publish email addresses on any site we build. Addresses in plain text are collected automatically, and a monitored form is both safer and easier to control.

Make it work on a phone

The phone number has to be text so it can be tapped, the form has to be usable with a thumb, and nothing important should require hovering, which does not exist on touch.

Test it yourself on a phone rather than on a desktop preview. Most contact attempts happen on a phone, and this is the page where a small mobile problem costs the most.

Our page on accessible forms covers the rest, including labels and error messages, which fail more often on contact pages than anywhere else.

After they contact you

Acknowledge immediately and automatically. A form with no confirmation is indistinguishable from a broken one, and people assume the worst within about an hour.

Say in that acknowledgment what happens next and when, repeating what the page promised. That consistency is what makes somebody wait rather than contacting a competitor.

Then check the route regularly. An unmonitored contact page turns a working website into a business quietly losing every enquiry it generates, which is the most expensive failure available.

Keep one person responsible for the route. Shared inboxes with nobody named are where enquiries sit for three days, because everybody assumes somebody else has already picked it up.