Reasons Why A Contact Form Is Better Than An Email Address On Your Website
Having ways for customers to contact you is critical on your website. The question is: do you simply list your contact details or do you build a contact form?
The short answer is both.
You want to give as many options as possible for people to make contact with you. This should include providing an email address and phone number, a contact form, and a live chat or chatbot option if you can.
Having a contact form on your website gives you a number of great benefits, including:
People Don’t Have To Leave Your Website
The issue with just providing an email address as a contact method is that people have to click away from your website and to their email platform. This means that once their email is sent, they’re no longer on your website and won’t be encouraged to carry on browsing. If they send you a message via a contact form, they’re still on your website after they hit send.
You Can Place Contact Forms At Strategic Points
You may have heard of barriers to contact before. This is essentially how convenient or inconvenient it is to get in contact with you via your website. The more a person has to do before they can contact you, the more opportunity you give them to get bored or frustrated by the process.
Your main contact form should be on your contact page of your website, along with your other contact details. What you can also do is place your contact form, or a shortened version of it on other pages around your website. For example, at the bottom or on the side of each of your service pages. When people are done reading about a service you provide and want to hire you or get a quote, they don’t even have to click over to the contact page – it can all be done right there.
It’s A Chance to Learn More About Your Target Audience
With a contact form, you can get a little bit more information from the people using it – definitely more so than you could if people just emailed you. You can add fields to your form that ask the person how they found out about your business or which particular services or products in your business they’re most interested in. Just be careful not to make the form too long or ask for too much information as this can be another barrier to contact.
Another way to gain information about your website visitors is having unique tracking codes linked to each contact form on your website. This way, you’ll know what the person was looking at that convinced them to get in touch. This can give you invaluable insights into what is working on your website and what your target audience is really responding to.
You’ll Be Able To Build Your Email List
On a contact form, you can add an opt-in button for your newsletter or sales database. If people select that, you’ll be able to send them marketing content via email. There is no way to do this easily if you’re simply relying on people contacting you via email or phone. You’re also likely to get more people signing up because they don’t have to worry about signing up separately on another form.
Always Include A Contact Form
There you have it, a contact form is an important part of any website design. It’s even better if you can have several contact forms placed strategically on service or product pages.
Ask your web designer to ensure that they follow these guidelines to make your brand as accessible to your audience as possible.
If you need a website that reaches the right people, Let’s Go Media can help – just check out our website as a great example of how to include an email and a contact form. See? It’s that easy to get in touch.