1. Navigation

Two options:

• An item ‘Contact’ or ‘Contact us’ in the main navigation, best as the last item.
• As a sub-item under ‘About us’, that’s also best placed at the end of a navigation. (Only if it’s a top menu that opens up on mouse-over.)

 Some additional remarks:

• During user tests we often see that people look for contact info under ‘About us’, even when there is an item ‘Contact’ in the navigation.
  • Even if you have an item ‘Contact’ in your main navigation, make sure you provide a link to the ‘Contact’ page under ‘About us’.
  • Not enough room in your main navigation? Leave out ‘Contact’ on the first level but be sure to put it as a sub-item under ‘About us’.
• Make sure the items ‘About us’ and ‘Contact’ are part of your main navigation. Don’t hide them away in a secondary navigation like a toolbar or a footer. Contact information is vital information. It needs to be accessible via the main menu on every corporate and government website.

2. Footer

Contact information in the footer:

• Your phone number and email address
  OR
• A link ‘Contact’ or ‘Contact us’

The footer is at the bottom of every page, preferably in a slightly smaller font size than the rest of the text.

3. Overview and product pages

Every page that contains information about your products or services should contain some form of contact information. Unless of course your business is done 100% online or you don’t want any pesky customers bothering you. In all other cases it’s essential.

Detail page

If somebody on your product page feels the need to contact you, for whatever reason, that should be possible from that page.

You can of course link to the contact page but giving the visitor an email address and phone number (and possibly a link to a contact form) is even better.

Put the contact information at the bottom of the page. Somebody’s who’s really interested in your product will more than likely look at everything you’ve got to say about it and scroll down.

You can also put the contact info or a call to action at the right side of the page. But don’t put it only at the right side. That’s not enough.

Overview page

On overview pages, where a visitor has various products to choose from, you should also put your contact information. That way a visitor who doesn’t quite know which product to choose can call or mail you to ask for advice.

4. Support area

Few things are more annoying than dissatisfied customers calling or emailing you to complain about your product. Why don’t they check out the great support area on the site? And that very extensive FAQ section?

That’s not really the right attitude though, is it? You should be extra nice to existing customers. Of course you should have a great online support area. But it should be just as easy for a customer to contact you by phone or mail if that’s what they want to do. 

You’ve got too many customers with problems? The support by phone or mail would cost you too much? Tough. Make a better product. Because dissatisfied customers will call you. Or would you prefer them to vent their anger and frustration on Facebook, Twitter or their blog? I didn’t think so.

5. Contact page itself

The actual contact page should contain all your contact information. No matter how big your company is, no matter how complicated you think it is, there should be 1 page with all the contact info.  

The basics:

• Official company name
• Address (With a link to a roadmap.)
• Phone number
• Fax number (If you’ve still got one.)
• Email addres
• Link to a simple contact form (Don’t ask the user to pick the department he wants to contact or what his question is about. Making sure the question gets to the right person is your job, not the user’s.)

Optional:

• Opening hours, when relevant.
• Closing dates, when relevant.
• VAT number, so the user knows you’re a real company.  

Several important departments?

Your sales department has a different phone number than your support department? Put a number of content blocks on the contact page with in each block that specific department’s contact details.

If you don’t want people to call the main office, put that info last on the page.

Several buildings in different locations?

• Less than 6 locations?
  Put them all on one page, in 2 lines of maximum 3 blocks per line. Put your main office’s contact information at the bottom.
• You own a chain of stores?
  Put a simple search feature at the top of the page (1 field where the user can type in either his postal code or the name of his city). Put the main office’s contact information at the bottom of the page.

Want to know how we can improve your website?
Ask us about an expert review or user test for your website.

‘It’s cheaper if they don’t call us’

Obviously it’s cheaper for your company if people just use your website instead of calling you on the phone. But sometimes people have questions they prefer to ask by phone. Don’t make that unnecessarily hard.

If they want to call you, they will call you

Some companies are so afraid of phonecalls from customers or potential customers that they hide their phone number or simply don’t put it on their website. Unless you’ve got an unlisted secret number people can’t look up in the Yellow Pages, I wouldn’t do that. People who want to call you will call you. Whether you like it or not.

If you force people to go to great lengths to find your phone number, they generally won’t be very friendly when they finally get you on the phone.

Or worse, if they can’t find your number, they simply won’t buy your product. Not on your website and not in the shop. You’ve angered them. Why should they give you their money?

Example: Isabel

Want to contact Isabel? This form’s it. At least, that’s what I thought. But then some people pointed out to me I had to go the Support section, called ‘Find the solution yourself’ (I gave up my search as soon as I saw ‘Find the solution yourself’: surely they’re not going to give me a phone number here?) and somewhere in there are all the phone numbers you could ever want. But as I said, I gave up before I could find them. And I’m sure a lot of other people would too. 

Put your phone number on your contact page

If people want to call you, they’ll look for a link ‘Contact’ or ‘Contact us’. Because that’s where they expect to find your phone number. So put it there.

Some companies put their contact details, including their phone number, in the footer of every page. That’s great, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t put it on the ‘Contact’ page anymore. Not everybody looks to the footer for contact information.

Don’t hide your phone number below the page fold on the contact page. And definitely don’t put it underneath a form. A lot of peoplke will see the form and simply assume that’s all there is. They won’t scroll down and they won’t see your phone number.

Example: AVEVE

The phone number is in the footer. But you can’t see that without scrolling. And because there’s a form there, a lot of people won’t scroll and they won’t find it.

Put your phone number on other pages too

If you don’t suffer from phone phobia, it’s probably a good idea to put your phone number on other pages besides the contact page as well.

A lot of people use the web to look up information. But when it comes to the final decision, they prefer to use the phone. To ask that final question or to place the order. ‘Just to be on the safe side.’ Make sure that’s easy. Put your phone number on those crucial pages.

Example: Share

If you want to open an account at Share, they prefer you to do that online. That makes sense. It costs them the least. So they put that option first. But they also realize that you might not want to do it online and rather than losing you as a customer altogether they offer other options as well, including a phone number.