Rhiannon Birch
8 Contact Page Mistakes that are Costing You Conversions
Although the homepage is often seen as the most important page of a website, the contact page is really the unsung hero – giving viewers the chance to get in touch and potentially become a customer. However, if created wrong, they can end up reducing your company’s chances of receiving submissions and even result in prospective customers abandoning your site! Very bad times.
You want to be Bugs Bunny, right? Chilling on the beach and chatting on the phone to people who want to buy your products/services, and compliment you on your fantastic business and beautifully crafted website! Well, we can’t really give you a bag of sand and a bucket of water for your office, but here are eight commonly-made contact page mistakes that may be costing you conversions and damaging your brand. Have a look at your website and make sure you are following these tips to help change these to create the best contact page for your business.
MIA Contact Page
A contact page is not optional – it is essential. It needs to be visible to consumers; otherwise, they may think that you don’t care about your customers enough to provide a clear way for them to contact you. I’m sure we’ve all been there. Desperately searching for a contact form or phone number, but just finding FAQs & social channels where it takes two days to get an unhelpful, templated response. It is the worst feeling.
Many businesses want to offer social customer service – and we agree, it’s a great channel for you to answer questions and resolve issues through. But you shouldn’t just push people to your social channels from your website. Some questions and situations may need a personal touch or a speedy response. Some people may not understand how to use social media or they may not have an account. Without a contact page, these are potentially lost leads or negative reviews waiting to happen.
Instead, create a page on your site that is dedicated to your contact details so that you can be contacted easily and so that you can become aware of any issues without them being spread across public channels.
Hide and Seek Contact Page
Make sure to have your contact page in the main navigation menu as it will be easier for people to find than if it is buried away in the footer menu. You want to show that you are easily accessible and want to talk to your customers.
If they are in two minds about your product or service, seeing the contact page may be the push they need to reach out and ask for more information, rather then wander off to a competitor. Customer experience is always the top priority and if they can’t navigate your website easily, you are letting them down.
Inadequate or Intrusive Contact Forms
With most contact forms, there are either too many or too few fields to fill out. You need to capture enough information so that you understand their query and when you call them can have all the answers at hand. However, you don’t want to have too many fields as people can become impatient and may not want to share all their personal details. There is a 25% optimum conversion rate with only three fields to fill out rather than the 15% rate when there are six or more fields.
Make sure that you’re making it clear and concise on the correct ways to input the information and that you construct the contact page based upon the site’s purpose and target audience. If the resulting contact form takes longer than two minutes to fill out, then you are asking for too much.
Not Analysing Submissions
This may sound obvious but so many businesses forget to review their submissions. If you fail to analyse the different types of submissions that you are receiving, then you are missing the chance to really optimise your website. For example, if you are a bakery and you receive a lot of messages asking whether you can bake Vegan or Gluten-free cakes, it would improve your user experience by adding in a FAQ’s section where you answer popular queries.
If receive a lot of submissions, consider creating a drop-down menu so that your potential customers can choose the topic of their enquiry. This can help you to prioritise them based upon the submission type.
By analysing your submissions, you can also become aware of any problems people are facing with your site or products. Keep a record of any submissions like this, and then if the number increases, you can be aware of any issues that you need to correct.
Form Only Options
Sometimes forms may not be the most convenient way for people to contact you. Some queries need a personal touch or an immediate resolution so you should offer other ways for people to get in touch. Other popular methods include a live chat system, a contact number, or even just your email address.
At the bottom of your contact page, you can also add links to your social channels so that potential customers can contact you through there too.
It’s always better to provide plenty of options as everybody has a different preference based upon their personality and requirements.
Mandatory CAPTCHA
Asking potential customers to fill out a mandatory CAPTCHA while filling out a contact form isn’t always a good idea. Even though this does filter out the human consumers from the bots, they aren’t always disability friendly and could mean that you’re missing out on conversions. Roughly 71% of the time, only three users agree on the CAPTCHA image contents. This proves that people’s perceptions are varied which could lead to their answers being labelled as incorrect, resulting in them leaving the site out of frustration.
We recommend that you carefully consider whether you need to remove or keep the CAPTCHA from your contact form. If you get a lot of spam and need to keep your inbox more streamlined, then sure it makes sense but if you are not really getting any submissions, try turning it off and seeing if it makes a difference.
Unmonitored Submissions
This is super, super important! If you don’t monitor your submissions and reply to them quickly, users may lose interest and forget why they got in touch, or even worse, go to a competitor who responds immediately. It all flows back to user experience – if they feel satisfied with your communication, they will be happier with the service you offer.
If you have a fast response time and aim to resolve issues or queries in one contact, you are more likely to gain repeat custom as they know that you are very responsive and on-hand if a problem pops up. But if you don’t keep a close eye on your submissions, then you could miss great opportunities and make your customer service look poor.
To avoid this, link your contact forms to an active account or a responsible person that will regularly check to make sure that every query is quickly answered. You can even set target time-frames so it becomes a mini competition!
Broken Forms
As annoying as it is, elements of your website will break from time to time – maybe due to WordPress updates or even overlooked plugin updates. A broken contact page is a killer. Whether it’s a broken submission button or a fault with the fields, you do not want to have any hurdles for people. Nobody likes broken websites and if it doesn’t work they will just leave the site.
Always try to make some time to test your contact forms at least once a month, especially if you haven’t received any submissions lately as this could be a sign that it is broken. The aim is to catch hiccups on your contact page before they develop into more significant issues.
Still don’t know what you are doing?
Think it may be more than just the contact form that is letting your brand down?
Contact Cheshire Cat Marketing today for a free website review, and if you need help creating a gorgeous website that converts, we can help.
