How to write a contact page
If you’re wondering how to write a contact page, you’re not alone. These little guys are small, but mighty pages that help service businesses turn more visitors into clients, as well as improve the communication within their business. In this guide, we’ll go over everything you need to know about how to create a contact page that delivers results. Keep reading!
Why is your contact page important?
After spending time and effort on building your website, it can be tempting to brush off the importance of a contact page, and put less effort into it.
In reality though, your contact page matters a lot. Let’s talk about why.
Your contact page can help you reduce spam
First, it helps reduce spam emails. When you post your email address directly on your site, it's an open invitation for spammers, who often use bots to scrape email addresses from websites, flooding your inbox with unwanted messages. A contact form, on the other hand, is harder for these bots to exploit, keeping your inbox cleaner and more manageable. And who doesn’t want that?
Your contact page can help you qualify leads
Your contact page can also help you qualify your leads and minimize the amount of people who reach out to you, only for both of you to find out you were not a good fit when a question or two on your contact page could have done that for you.
Your contact page can help you close more clients
A contact page also allows you to get the information you need from visitors who are interested in your services. When someone reaches out through a contact form, you can (and should) set specific fields for them to fill out. This means you get relevant details upfront, whether it's their name, email address, or any other information, which saves you tons of time and gives you the necessary context to respond effectively (making it easier to close clients).
Your contact page makes your reader’s life easier
This also makes it easier for your leads. Instead of them having to guess what to include in their message to you, your contact page tells them exactly what you need. This clarity can increase the likelihood of potential clients reaching out, as the process feels less daunting. The less confusion, of course, the better!
What makes a contact page good (and what makes it bad)?
OK, so a contact page is important. BUT what makes a good one?
Well, one word comes to mind first — user experience. When someone fills out your contact page, it’s likely one of the first times they are interacting with your business. And their experience with you sets the tone for how they expect the rest of their time working with you will be. So, it’s very important your contact page sets the RIGHT tone for what’s to come.
And while there are obvious things that make a contact page NOT good, like broken forms, but there are also things that are not so obvious, like not setting expectations, not gathering the right information, and not finding ways to continue the conversation if someone decides not to fill out your form. If you want to learn how to write a contact page for your business that ISN’T bad though, keep reading.
Tips on writing a great contact page
If you want to write a great contact page, one that helps you convert your visitors into clients, there are a few things you need to do.
Tip #1: Understand what you want from your contact page
Before you start writing your page, take a moment to think about what you actually want from this page. Are you looking to gather leads? Do you want to provide customer support? Maybe you’re aiming to build partnerships or simply answer general inquiries. Knowing your objectives will shape the content of your contact page.
For example, if your main goal is to gather leads (as I assume it is if you’re a service business), you’ll want to create a form that collects key information related to your services to better qualify your leads (more on this later). After figuring out what you want from your contact page, you can get to writing it.
Tip #2: Continue to show your brand voice
You know what people love? Personality! In fact, roughly 51% of people have purchased from a brand because of their online voice. So, make sure your contact page still has a personality and is in line with your brand voice! If that voice is funny and friendly, don’t be afraid to add a bit of humor (yes, even in your contact page!). If your brand voice is more formal, continue that trend. Always remember that every page on your website is a representation of your brand, so don’t lose that voice right as someone is ready to contact you. If you don’t know what that voice is, check out this guide on brand voices.
Tip #3: Include a headline and introduction
Just because someone clicks on your contact page, doesn’t mean they’re 100% certain they even want to reach out. They may have navigated there from a blog post, without even checking out other pages on your website (like your About page) that really show who you are. So, provide a little introduction, as well as a headline to pull your reader in, about what you do above your contact form.
It may seem simple, but it can be just what your reader needs to be convinced to reach out to you or check out those other important pages on your site to learn more about your businesses.
Tip #4: Ask the right questions
This is where tip #1 comes in handy. When deciding what questions you want to ask in your contact page, you’ll want to remember the goal of the form. For example, let’s say your goal is to gather and qualify your leads.
What information is going to help you qualify your leads? Maybe you have your prices listed on your website and you want to make sure whoever reaches out to you can actually afford you. A question either confirming they know what your prices are or listing your prices as a reminder might help you avoid inquiries from people who wouldn’t be able to afford you anyways. Or if your services are regularly booked out months in advance, you may want to include a field asking when they need your services by, so you can determine if you can deliver on time. You know your business and what qualifies someone as a good fit to work with you, so your qualifiers might be different, but spend some time thinking about what they are before creating your form.
Other important information you need to gather is information that will help you make the next steps of your onboarding process easier. For example, if the next step after someone contacts you is a sales call, you’ll want to gather the information you need to prepare for that call. That might be their website URL, services they’re interested in (if you have multiple) and THEIR goal for why they’re reaching out to you.
You might also want to ask questions that help you understand how your reader found you (which is an important part of understanding what’s working in your business).
And finally (and most importantly), gather their contact information!
Tip #5: Make sure they know what to expect
Always, always, always set expectations for when your reader will hear back from you, whether that’s in 4 days, 48 hours, 24 hours, or 8 hours. This might seem like an obvious tip, but you’d be surprised how often it gets left out. And that can be damaging for your (already new and fragile) relationship with your reader. After all, maybe they’re just assuming you’ll get back to them in a day, and then you get back to them a week later. They may have found someone else already!
Other than timing expectations, if you have a typical flow to how you work with clients, include that on your contact page so your reader can be prepared for what’s next.
Tip #6: Include the option to sign up to your email list
If someone has found themselves on your contact page, chances are, they’re at least THINKING about continuing the conversation. But if they decide they don’t want to reach out yet, that doesn’t mean you can’t suggest continuing the conversation in the form of them signing up to your email list! This doesn’t have to be hard, it can be as easy as including a simple newsletter sign up form, or you can include links to your lead magnets to make it a little more enticing.
Including an email sign-up option on your contact page not only helps grow your email list, but also helps you connect with people who may want to work with you down the line.
Tip #7: Include FAQs
This ties in with the idea of creating a great experience for your readers. Usually, whenever we think about working with a business, we have a million and one questions about what that would look like. What types of payments do they accept? Do they do other, related services? As a business owner, you’ve probably heard many of these questions before!
So, if you have a list of questions you seem to be hearing from potential clients over and over again, include them in a FAQ section of your contact page. Not only does it give your readers even more information about what they can expect from working with you, it also gives YOU more opportunities to show off your personality and brand voice in a page that most people keep pretty bare.
Should your contact page be SEO-optimized?
The point of contact pages are not typically to be searchable. Usually, a website visitor will get there through another page of your website. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that you should ignore SEO best practices like writing a good meta description and meta title, linking to other pages on your website, and including an H1 heading. Remember, every page of your website has value and should be optimized for SEO, including your contact page!
Final thoughts
A great contact page can help you turn more website visitors into leads AND encourage more effective communication with them. It cuts down on spam, makes your client onboarding process simpler, and just makes working with you a whole lot easier.
Hopefully, the tips in this blog will help YOU write a more effective contact page for your business.
And if you need help writing your contact page (as well as other pages of your website), check out my website copywriting services!
