Most websites have a Contact Us page. They're so common, in fact, many business owners treat them as an afterthought, leading them to often fail at their most basic objective; to effectively engage visitors. This may seem of little consequence, but an inefficent Contact Us page can hurt businesses more than they suspect, because whether this initial engagement translates into a lead, an answered question, or simply making the visitor feel heard; this page is the start of most business relationships, and should be valued accordingly.

With this in mind, we've analyzed many such pages from our customer's websites, and have compiled a list of suggestions for people to implement in their own Contact Us pages to make better first impressions with visitors, and to generate more leads with less effort.  

A Contact Us  page should do the following:

Automate your follow-up with prospects
To be effective and accountable, a CONTACT US page should feed directly into your CRM, and create some kind of follow-up workflow with the right people. Most Contact Us forms generate emails to one of the employees, that generally forces them to stop what they're doing, key in the contact information, and then schedule a follow-up. Needless to say, effective lead generation workflow should be less "work", so don't make this form a "bridge to nowhere"; have it complete all these steps for you, so responses are faster, and more reliable.  

Reflect your company culture
If all website templates feature Contact Us pages, you have to work to make yours look and feel different than others. Express your company personality here, as well as your business and brand. Include a mission statement if available. Ours includes our company mascot just for fun.

Give them the option to book time with you
Nothing leaves the visitor with a stronger sense of connection than booking an actual appointment with your team. Whether you publish an online appointment booking link for a department or an individual employee, this will stop your visitor from looking for answers elsewhere. It's a time commitment that has now bound both parties.

Include various methods of contact
The size of your business, your visitor demographics, and the number of inquiries you receive, will determine which of these things you can include:
Analog points of contact should include:

• Phone number (Toll-free preferred if your service area is wide)
• Physical address, along with an embedded map of your location
• Hours of operation

Digital points of contact should include:

• Email address
• Appointment booking links
• Social media links
• A live chat session

Humanize your team
Some companies seem so automated, they seem barely human. You can increase your lead generation efforts by including a photograph of your team near your contact form. The point is to show that on the other side of the form are real humans who are ready to be of service to your site visitors. 

Avoid unnecessary fields
With the initial engagement, often less is more. Remember, your prospect’s initial contact should be brief, and create the lowest barrier to access possible. Some forms may require more details like service or quote requests, but the initial contact should only include name, company, email, and maybe phone (if an analog follow-up is required). The more hoops they have to jump through, the less likely they'll do so.

Include an answer page with useful information
The forms answer page should not be simply a "Thank You", but a clear expectation of human response times. An automated response is not considered a response. Providing this information boosts  a prospect's confidence that a response is eventually on its way, and keeps them from looking for the same assurance elsewhere.
You can even include an emergency contact link if a faster response is needed.

Make it easy to use and find
If a visitor needs more than a few seconds to find your contact us page, you risk losing them to a competitor. Make it part of the top-level navigation, or directly under About Us, so it's visible at a glance. As mentioned at the outset, if all websites have this page template, visitors should not have to look hard to find it.

SUMMARY - We eat our own dog food
At Keystroke we practice what we preach. Check our Contact Us page, a see how we've incorporated all the above points into this page. We use Link2forms to embed forms throughout our website, and each form displays a helpful nswer page, and then triggers an immiedate follow-up activity in Act! for the relevant staff. We also use Link2calendar to allow visitors to book appointments with us online.

If you'd like to learn more about some of the online lead-generation technologies we incoprorate into our Contact Us page, please use the form on that page, and we'll follow up within one business day.