You optimised your website, you post great, engaging content and you are constantly encouraging your website visitors to get in touch with you. However, you are not getting the results you were expecting. There are nowhere near enough messages sent by email, through the contact form or by telephone. What could be the reason? One of the main problems may be right at the source of the problem: your contact page. We saw too many errors in various websites, so we decided to create a list of top contact page mistakes you must avoid.
How Can a Contact Page Hurt Your Conversion Rate?
People are not going to invest too much time and mental effort into getting in touch with a business. If their contact details are not obvious, consumers will simply look for another business. This is even more obvious if the consumer does not have a relationship with your business – they never asked you a question or placed an order.
Thus, you cannot count on their loyalty to have some patience to look for your contact data. Thus, top contact page mistakes cost you potential clients. They saw something interesting on your site and want to find out more, perhaps, delivery conditions or whether the product is on stock. But they can’t contact you quickly and conveniently. Opportunity missed, lead lost.
So, what are the top contact page mistakes you must avoid? Here they are:
1. Contact Page Hunt
Easter egg hunts are fun for children and adults alike. A contact page hunt, not so. In fact, no one will bother with this activity. How does this situation occur? In most of the cases, the contact page is left out of the main menu.
It appears in the header or footer of the web page. However, these areas usually have a smaller font than the rest of the contact. A lot of people may miss the footer button for the contact page. This is why you should always include the contact page in the main navigation menu of the website.
2. Mandatory CAPTCHA
CAPTCHA – letters and numbers written in a way that bots cannot read – are helpful to eliminate spam messages. But they may also prevent people with visual or hearing disabilities from getting in touch with your business to order your products.
Even people without disabilities have trouble interpreting CAPTCHA messages. A survey found out that only 71% of the time three different people agreed on the contents of such a message. Do you really want to risk losing so many potential clients? We don’t think so, and this is why we include mandatory CAPTCHA on the list of top contact page mistakes.
3. Using Only a Contact Form on the Page
Contact forms are convenient. You get the message delivered in a special email account and you can respond to users in an orderly manner. But some users want an answer now. Or maybe they just want to know how to contact you at a later date.
This is why you should also add a phone number and an email address on your contact page. Here are a few bonus tips: make the phone number clickable, so that visitors can call you directly, without having to dial. Secondly, make the website address personal, i.e., someone’s name instead of “office” or “contact”. People feel more comfortable writing to another person than to an impersonal address.
4. Asking for Too Much Information
When people go to your contact page and see a contact form with six or seven text fields, they backtrack on their decision to write to you. The ideal contact form should contain the fields:
- Salutation
- Name
- Email address
- Your message.
That’s it. Once you establish rapport with the lead, they will feel comfortable to disclose more personal information, such as their address and mobile phone.
5. Broken Contact Forms
You should test your contact form on an ongoing basis. Sometimes, websites get broken. And one of the errors may affect your contact page. The most common type of contact form errors is the Submit button that does not work.
Another error involves the defective operation of drop down elements (for the salutation section, for instance). As a best practice, you should always give the visitor a message that their message was sent successfully. To take one step further, you can also send them a confirmation email that you received their message.
That’s the end of the list. We hope you were already avoiding these top contact page mistakes, but now you know how to make sure your contact pages are usable for all visitors!