One of the basic pages that most websites should have, especially if you’re going to be doing e-commerce, is a contact page. Put very simply, a contact page is a page where you have information so that people can contact you. There are several different ways that you can do this, and below we’ll talk about the different methods.
The first thing you want to have on your contact page, before the actual method of contact information, is some type of an introductory paragraph. Don’t just have people come to this page and throw and email address at them. It doesn’t look as good and also tends to send a message of “yeah yeah, if you need us here’s the darn email….” Instead, provide some type of a nice, customer oriented paragraph that makes the customer feel like you actually want them to contact you. Here’s a very basic example: “Have a question or comment? We’re here to help! Just fill out the form below and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can. Most questions are answered within 2 business days.”
Once you’ve finished up your intro paragraph, now its time to give the customers the contact method. I’m going to list 4 ways you can do this, but I want to make sure you understand one thing before I do: you don’t need to use all 4! Just use the 1 (or 2 at the most) that work best for you and your website. With that being said, here are the methods you can use:
Physical Address
This is probably one of the least necessary for an internet commerce business, but some people like the do it. This is most effective if you are doing a website for an already running offline business. But if you’re just running the company out of your house, this might not be the best option.
Email Address
This one is very easy to set up and is also a very easy way to have people reach you. Yes, if you list an email address on your website there is a chance that it could get spam harvested and you could start to receive a lot of spam (harvesting is illegal anyway, so that’s why I don’t worry too much about it), but its a method that most people are familiar with.
There are two main ways you can approach this one. First, you could provide one main email address that people can use. Second, you could provide several different email addresses based on the purpose or ‘department’ that the email should be directed to. For example: For General questions email info@whatever.com. For questions about your order email orders@whatever.com and so forth. This does two things. For one, it helps you to know what to expect depending on the email address they write you at. Sort of like a way of organizing your own email. Secondly, it makes you look like a bigger company because people will know that if they want to ask a question of the company they have to get the right department. Either approach is fine, just do what works best for you and what makes the most sense for you and your website.
Contact Form
I’m a big fan of contact forms for a couple of reasons. First of all, they look good. A well-done form can give your site a more professional appearance. Also, when you do a contact form you can make sure that you are receiving the information that you need to from the customer. When people just write you an email, they may forget to include some very important information (like their order number or something like that to easily identify the specific order they’re talking about) that would make it a lot easier for you to answer their question. But with a form they’ll see that particular box and remember to include it. Or you could make it a required field so they have to include it. A third reason I like forms, and this goes along with the first reason a bit, is that they fill up the page more. One problem I see a lot of times with contact pages is that they are really short. Contact forms help to avoid that problem.
Phone Number
There are a lot of benefits to having a phone number on your site. First of all, a phone number can help to build trust with your customers. There are still a lot of people out there that are very cautious when buying things online. But if they see a phone number, they may tend to trust that particular site more. There are people out there that before they place an order, they will always look for a phone number and call it just to make sure that the company actually exists. So, a few guidelines before you just put your home phone on your site. First of all, I would never recommend doing that! Make sure you’re using a phone number that is only for your business. This way you can avoid the kids from answering business calls. Its not a bad idea to have it go straight to a business voice mail, but make sure you respond to those calls on a timely basis. Its also good to get an 800 number if you can.
For awhile, you might answer your own phone. But if your business really takes off (which of course we hope it does :-)) you may find that answering your own phone is a little hard to keep up with. At that point you will probably want to look into some type of an answering service like MyAnswering.com or someone like that. They’ll answer the phones for you and save you a lot of time. Remember, you don’t want to create another full-time job for yourself, so contracting things like this out to other companies is a way to free up your own time.
Ok, so there are the tips about your contact page. I hope you find these useful in setting up or modifying the contact page for your own site!
)