A person who comes to your website wishes to communicate with you. What does that person start searching for?
Your Contact Us page.
This is a page on your website which will take visitors through the process of converting from being window shoppers to customers.
Contact Us pages are not very often used or fully understood on the internet nowadays.
A few businesses do not take advantage of them in any way, and those that do can often overlook these significant pages when redesigning their website.
That stops today.
Here is a roadmap I will provide you with to strategize and edit this poor web page. I will provide numerous illustrations to ignite your imagination.
Let’s get started.
A Contact Us page is distinct in that it provides more detailed information regarding how to communicate with you.
Your page should epitomize your brand and encourage a click. Many websites have a bland Contact Us page. One should ensure that their contact us page includes a value proposition, regardless of the amount of text it holds.
What Is a Contact Us Page?
Consider a Contact Us page as a type of online visiting card. Sure, it’s short and concise. If someone has a desire to make contact with you, they can use this page for that purpose.
Contact Us pages often get lumped in with other critical website resources, including:
- About Us pages: Use this resource to explain your company’s history, goals, and direction. If someone wants to know how you became a leader in your field, the data is ready to go.
- Help pages:Â Customers with critical product or service questions lean on this page to get their answers.
- Employment pages:Â Job seekers need private, protected spaces to learn more about open opportunities.
Do You Need a Contact Us Page?
A Contact Us page should not be disregarded because it serves as a symbol of trust. Include your contact details, such as your address, phone number and email address, to show uncertain customers that they can always contact you.
Trust and transparency matter in marketing. Contact Us pages start the process.
Five Key Contact Us Page Elements
You know you need a Contact Us page. You don’t know what to include in the document. Overcome the creative struggles and utilize this formula for achievement.
A converting Contact Us page contains these critical pieces:
- Your company name: Don’t beat around the bush. Use your full company name.
- Your physical address:Â This can get tricky for multi-location companies. Maps often solve the problem (and more on that in a minute). If you share only one address, use the one associated with your corporate headquarters.
- A map to your location: Google Maps hold immense power for marketers. When customers know where you are, even when they’re looking at a mobile device, your conversion rates can skyrocket. Boost that power by adding a Google Map to your Contact Us page.
- Your contact information:Â Include a phone number, email address, and a quick data-collection form. Customers need plenty of calls to action. Fight off spam with a CAPTCHA as well.
- Links to relevant pages:Â If you know customers have product questions, show them to your Help page. If you have plenty of job seekers, highlight that Jobs page.
Avoid the inclination to fill the page with more specifics and facts. Keep things clean and streamlined with this list.
Build the Perfect Contact Us Form
If you wish to make customer interactions more efficient, forms are essential. Constructing forms in an appropriate manner makes navigating queries straightforward.
Your form could include several fields, including:
- Name
- Location
- Current customer (Y/N)
- Question
- Email address
- Phone number
It might be attractive to put all these fields on your form. The more data you have, the better, right?
Not always.
When patrons are overwhelmed with inquiries, they tend to abandon the site. Form completion rates and added fields are inversely related.
In order to maintain high conversion rates and provide an exceptional user experience, only pose essential questions.
Contact Us Page Do’s and Don’ts
We’ve walked through several examples of pages that convert. We have given a number of ideas that can be used immediately.
But there’s more to learn.
As you’re working on your Contact Us page, be sure to:
- Be a good journalist. Put the important stuff first. Your visitors are there to connect with you. Make those opportunities easy to find and deliver an exceptional user experience. Save the rest for last.
- Promote your page like a pro. Put a link to your page in your email signature and link it to your social media accounts. Make sure customers know you’re interested in a connection.
- Link to your page. Customers look in the top-right corner of a page for Contact Us links. Make sure each page on your site connects to that critical page.
Before you publish your Contact Us page, be sure to avoid:
- Cluttered design. Don’t fill the space with tons of graphics, jokes, or text blocks. Respect what your consumers are there to do – contact you.
- Overconfidence. Use A/B testing to find the design your customers want. Don’t be overconfident about your design prowess — you might be surprised by what works!
- A desktop-first mentality. Test your site on mobile devices. Try out the form fields. Plenty of customers will visit you on the go; make sure their experience is a good one.
Designing a Contact Us page that is effective in converting people into customers may take a lot of time. Do not be hesitant to take your time, evaluate your progress, and start over if needed. Making errors is not permissible on a feature that makes up an integral part of your website.
Customising your HTML contact form
Beauty isn’t everything. However, it is very critical when it comes to designing forms. This HTML form is not especially attractive and does not encourage people to complete it. The appearance is outdated, no logos or design work is present, and it’s rather cumbersome to complete.
So how can you make your form less… ugly?
There are two primary choices: gaining proficiency in CSS or opting for a specialized online form creator that will do most of the work for you. Option one necessitates much more labor than option two.
When employing an online form creator such as Paperform, setting up an impressive, strong form only requires a few minutes and doesn’t require writing any coding. You don’t have to be familiar with HTML, CSS, or any other abbreviation to be able utilize our expert design elements, intelligent processes, automated emails, and more than 2,000 app connections.
We acknowledge we’re a bit one-sided, but when you need a straightforward tool for creating a cool contact form that operates as desired, Paperform is the ideal selection.
We will show you the process of using CSS to design the components of HTML forms if you decide to go ahead with using them. For novices, you won’t be able to modify anything beyond the typeface, colors, and design of the form. However, even a small effort makes a difference when dealing with such a dull topic.
Fonts and colours
If you’re constructing a communication form for your organization, it is desirable for it to have a similar look to the rest of your website. CSS can facilitate that encounter and make your form easier to comprehend and look more eye-catching.
This list will give you an overview of all the different font and color choices available. You can alter the hue of the backdrop or the colour of the text. Remember that the look of certain things can differ depending on the web browser that is being used. There may be slight disparities in the way certain typefaces appear in Chrome as opposed to Safari.
Padding and margins
Each HTML element is contained in an invisible container. The “box model” is a useful tool for those wanting to understand how to alter the look and arrangement of HTML components. This can be viewed as a visualization. It is composed of the outer areas (margins and borders), any internal space (padding) and the items that make up the form (the content).
Here’s a quick breakdown of the different elements:
- Content is where your text or images appear.
- Padding is the area around your content.
- Border is the visible border that wraps around the padding and content.
- Margins arethe area outside your border.
You can customize your form’s appearance on the page by making alterations to components such as the dimensions of the submit button and width of the input boxes. The variations might appear slight, yet they can significantly affect the clarity of your document.
Challenges of making contact forms with HTML
It will take some time and some experimentation, but you can eventually construct a fundamental contact form with HTML. But that doesn’t mean it’ll be easy. You’ll run into several obstacles when trying to configure and personalise the process, making it a slow and arduous task.
1. Customisation is limited
You can employ CSS to alter the default appearance of your form. If you’d like to include images, video, page division, set conditions, or any other kind of state-of-the-art skill, you’re unfortunately not in luck. It takes a significant amount of time and effort to thoroughly modify using CSS. It is not reasonable for people who are not professionals or entrepreneurs with limited time.
Forms of contact particularly benefit from having a fashionable look. It’s likely that people will be less likely to give out their personal information if the design of a website looks like it was made in the 1990s. Customizing your website can help customers to build trust in your brand and make it look more professional.
2. Limited options for data storage and organisation
This post contains code in the HTML file and the PHP file which, when used, will direct any responses from the form to your email address. What can be done if you desire for the entries to be put into a Google Sheet autonomously? Or sent to your CRM to update customer profiles?
Moving your information to different systems adds efficiency and spares you effort, as well as enabling you to keep your valuable customer details orderly and available. Sadly, it is extremely hard for a novice to accomplish that task using HTML.
You may find that if you use the form stated in this article, you will soon be overwhelmed by an inundation of emails that you must manually sort.
3. Steep learning curve
Absolutely, you don’t have to be an authority to replicate some programming and produce an essential HTML contact form. In order to utilize it, you must possess knowledge of coding basics. It’s impossible to learn HTML in a short amount of time.
It’s complex, finicky, and takes time to understand. As any entrepreneur or person in charge of a non-profit organization can attest to, leisure time is not something that is readily available. No premade HTML form templates are available, meaning you must confront the fear of beginning with an empty page.
4. Troubleshooting is tricky
Mistakes happen—especially when you’re learning a new skill. It can be a more difficult task to rectify an error in HTML than it is to clean up a splashed La Croix.
If your programming does not function correctly, you will receive a notification of failure. You need to assess the issue and deduce an effective solution. It is challenging to figure out the solution to a problem without having a customer service team to discuss it with and having to read through a lot of written information.
Conclusion
If you possess a small business, you understand how important (and brief) your leisure time is. Why waste your time trying to figure out HTML in order to have a basic contact form?
The Contact Us section of your website is a crucial component. People head here when they want to reach you. Make that communication as quick and painless as possible.
Back away from the YouTube tutorials. There’s a better way. A plethora of digital, no-code instruments can be utilized to generate capable, attractive web-based solutions.
Publish with confidence, and watch those conversion rates. If you aren’t getting the outcome that you desire, alter it!
You can use trial and error, as well as careful monitoring, to create a Contact Us page that benefits not only your customers, but also your business and the people around you.