Landing pages are probably one of the first pages you think about when it comes to creating conversions. But what about the contact page? It is after all the bridge between you and the outside world.
As this page will probably be one of the most viewed pages on your site it is also one of the best areas to gain your conversions. Unfortunately, you’re probably making a mistake that is costing you a conversion or two without you realizing it.
Of course some mistakes are more obvious than others. Not sure if you’re contact page is a conversion failure? Check out the 8 contact page mistakes that can cost you conversions and how to fix them.
1. MIA Contact Page
The biggest mistake you can make is one of the most obvious yet you’d be surprised how many sites lack a contact page. There’s a surprising trend for portfolio-based sites that forgo the contact page.
In lieu of a contact page, some site owners are now opting for simply throwing social icons up at the top of the page. While this is a great way to let people know you are socially available it does nothing for people who, who don’t have any form of social media or those of us who are trying to touch base or inquire over a matter regarding your product or service.
There’s no excuse to not have one especially when you have spent your time designing the front page with HD video and parallax scrolling. Your users can’t contact you and they are likely to think you don’t quite care about actually doing business.
2. Hide and Seek Contact
Many of us have played the never-ending (and annoying) game of “where the heck is the contact page”. This game entails—you guessed it—searching for the contact page so you can query the site owner for one reason or another.
Usually, if you can’t find the contact page in the navigation menu you are likely to find it in the footer navigation. While this is all well and good, it isn’t very intuitive to users. What’s worse is when instead of finding it in the footer you have to locate the contact page via Google query to find the secret page link.
Your contact page should always be in the navigation menu. Avoid putting it in the footer menu as a frustrated user is likely to turn tail end and leave your site.
3. Inadequate or Intrusive Contact Forms
The art of the contact form is a sacred and trying practice that it takes a while to get right, but only a second to get wrong. Contact forms usually fall under two spectrums, either not enough fields or so many that it includes inputting your grandmother’s mother’s maiden name and of course the dreaded phone number request.
People want to be able to tell you what they need to tell you but if you don’t give them the opportunity you can be losing out on a conversion. The same could be said that not everyone has the time or patience to fill out eighteen fields just to ask you if their discount code will work. You could also be losing a conversion by not explaining what each form is for or the correct way to input their information.
Build your contact forms based on your site’s purpose and on the site’s target audience. If a user feels like your form doesn’t adequately allow them to address their needs then it isn’t a good form. If your form takes more than two minutes to fill out then you’re asking way too much.
4. Not Analyzing Submissions
This may not deal with the actual contact page but failing to analyze the type of submissions you generally receive will affect your contact page design, form and detail information. Analyzing your submissions will give you a good idea of why people are contacting you and therefore you can make the needed changes to better address those issues.
If the majority of your users are contacting you on three different issues constantly you might want to consider designing a subject dropbox so they can select the topic closer to their inquiry. Analyzing can also help bring awareness to any other problems your site might have depending on the number of submissions you receive and the frequency.
Don’t just respond to submissions and move on. Keep a record of them because chances are if one person is contacting you for a reason there will be four more who have the same inquiry or issue.
5. Form Only Options
Forms are great but sometimes they aren’t the most convenient way for a user to get in contact with you for one reason or another. Usually, if a person is trying to get in contact with you it is probably for something important so you don’t want to limit them. Offering more than one venue makes you seem more accessible.
There are three other viable options of chat, call or email (which is in form format if you choose that option).
6. Mandatory CAPTCHA
CAPTCHAs are not disability friendly (visual or developmental) which should be a good enough reason to scrap them from your forms in the first place. If limited usability isn’t enough to convince you, how about the fact that only 71% of the time will three users agree on the CAPTCHA image contents.
While the reason behind using a CAPTCHA at the end of your contact submission forms is a good one it isn’t worth it when users can spend minutes refreshing the code to find a visual they can actually discern. Most users will probably end up saying “forget it” and not finish.
7. Unmonitored Submissions
Just because there is a form that is filled and submitted doesn’t mean that a reply is guaranteed. We have all filled out numerous forms in our lives and have never received a response which largely boils down to no one was is actually watching what comes in.
Not watching your submissions is a great way to blow a potentially important opportunity. It also doesn’t speak very well about your site’s management and your relationship with your users.
Link your contact forms to an account that you are sure to check on a regular basis or assign the task to someone responsible. There is no point in having a contact form if you’re not going to bother to respond to the people who contact you.
8. Broken Forms
Things break every now and again on a site, it’s just part of the territory but it doesn’t mean that it should stay broken. Forms can be broken in various ways. From submit buttons that don’t work to forms that don’t acknowledge you have all the fields completed and continues to send back an error message. Forms can break for strange reasons.
While it probably isn’t your fault that your form breaks, especially if you’re using a third-party application, your user is unlikely to think like that. They will see it as an excuse to flee your site and Depending on your schedule and the influx of submissions you receive you should always test your contact form once a month especially if you haven’t received any submissions lately. This will allow you to catch any form hiccups as they develop before your users does.