Adding Contact Details to a Website
All websites should have clear instructions on how the visitor can contact you.
Most Web based businesses have only a email contact. However you can greatly increase your credibility by including additional contact details especially when you are selling items online.
Brick and mortar based businesses will always have additional possibilities such as telephone, Fax and Postal address.
Where to Include Contact Details
For brick and mortar/service companies then it is a good idea to include the main contact details at the top of each page.
The main contact details are the email and telephone number, but not the postal address.
A dedicated contact use page is also required which will contain more details, like full postal address, map and directions. If the company has multiple offices then the contact details of the other offices can also be included.
An increasing number of small companies will include the phone number in the meta description. The advantage of placing the telephone number in the meta description is that the description usually appears in the search results and so the client/visitor doesn't need to click through to the page in order to contact the business.
Here is a sample of the SERPS for a search on the phrase london seo consultant. Notice that one business uses the phone number as part of the description
How to Include the Contact details
Most web owners use plain text and/or graphics. I used to recommend graphics instead of text because of spam issues, but it doesn't appear to be such a problem these days, and so I also use plain text for phone numbers and even email addresses.
Many sites include contact details as part of a logo/header graphic on each page. Here is a typical example below.
Creating a Contact Us Page
A contact us page is a dedicated page that is part of the main navigation and is usually placed at the bottom of the page and appears on all web pages.
Although some contact details like phone number and email can be placed on the home page and other web pages as described above, only the contact us page has all of the available contact options.
The main mechanisms used for contacting a website/business owner are:
- Phone number
- Mobile Phone number
- Fax number
- Postal Address
- Email Address
- IM (instant messenger address)
- Direct chat from website
- social media e.g. twitter
and I would recommend you include all that are appropriate on your contact page.
In addition you should consider
- Adding a map
- Providing detailed instructions on how to get to your business.
- Make email links clickable
- Make phone numbers clickable ( for smart phone users)
- Adding photos of your business and maybe you and your staff.
Email Address Contact
This is by far the most common mechanism used on websites and there are two main methods for doing this. They are a simple link and a contact form.
Email links
In the early days of the web most sites used the mailto tag to send email.
This looks like a simple hyperlink but when you click the link the default email client is launched with the destination address already completed. Here is an example link
Below is the HTML code for the above link.
| <a href="mailto:steve@doesnotnexist.com?subject=Feedback">contact us</a> |
This is still used but can result in a tremendous amount of spam. It can be replaced with an encrypted link that can stop some email harvesting spiders but it is rarely done. See http://hivelogic.com/enkoder/form.
Besides spam another problem with this method is that it relies on a correctly configured email client on the sending machine. Most PC users have one but if you are using this type of form from a PC in an Internet cafe ,or from a friends, machine then it doesn't work.
However this is probably the most common method used because of how easy it is to implement.
Using A Form
On most websites a contact form is the most common way of obtaining feedback from visitors. It is far more flexible than the email method and has the added advantage that you can Prompt the visitor for more information than email address if you need to.
The way most forms work is that the visitor fills out the form and clicks submit. Then the form is processed by either.
- A JavaScript routine on the client or
- A PHP (ASP,perl etc) script on the Server
- Both
The purpose of the JavaScript is usually to verify the form fields before the form is sent to the server for processing, but it can also be used to counter spam programs.
The PHP script on the server takes the information from the form and in the case of a contact form assembles it into an email that is then sent to the contact address.
The php script can also be used to counter spam programs.
If you are using an html/php template then you will need to obtain a form script. Your hosting package probably provides basic scripts that you can use but you will need to have a basic understanding of web forms and php to implement them If you are using WordPress then it is much easier as there are numerous plugins that make it very easy .
For my WordPress sites I use the Fast Secure Contact Form for WordPress by Mike Challis.
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