Over all my years of creating websites, visiting websites, doing a bit of SEO and generally checking people out, one of the things I tend to believe is useless is a contact page. I touched upon it years ago when I wrote a post titled SEO & Common Business Sense, I said that I probably needed to write a post on my belief on contact pages since I stated it all the time. It’s about time I finally do that; stay tuned! 🙂
Let’s start with blogs just to get them out of the way. If you look at the left side of my blog, you see individual pages I’ve created. The most important page over there is my About page. If anyone’s really interested in reaching out to me for any reason that doesn’t pertain to a particular blog post, all the information needed is in there.
Some bloggers have a contact page which usually gives an email address or is a contact sheet. In my opinion, it’s a major waste of space. After all, if you already have an About page it’s probably where people who want to know more about you (unless they want to check out my 100 things about me page lol) are going to go first. Why not give them what they need to contact you from there instead of creating a basically useless page?
WordPress gives everyone a default About page; they don’t give you a default Contact page. My thinking is that the people at WordPress agree with me that it’s a ridiculous enterprise! lol In any case, the blog owner gets to determine if he or she wants people to know anything about them or whether they want to give people a way to contact them outside of just leaving comments. Since a page is already created for you, why not go that route?
Now let’s talk about websites, no matter what kind they are. Do you really need a contact page? Have you seen most contact pages?
I’m of the opinion that no websites need contact pages. There are two other ways to handle this instead of wasting web space with something so vapid.
One, give people a way to contact you from every page on your website. That’s how I’ve handled all my websites over the years, and I’ve done the same for most of my clients. Those who really wanted one got one, but I’ve always felt they missed an opportunity to be reached by potential clients by making them leave the page that got them interested in you and making them go to a page that offers them nothing.
I mentioned earlier that I visit a lot of sites, and I like taking a look around. Here’s what I see most of the time:
1. There’s no contact information anywhere on the site, including where they are (I’m shocked by how often I see this)
2. They have contact information on their Contact page, and nothing else
3. They have contact information on their Contact page, and are trying to collect unnecessary extra information at the same time.
Who ain’t got time for that (how many of you remember that meme?). It’s the most idiotic business thing I’ve ever seen; yeah, I said it! No information is problematic enough; not allowing easy access for you to be reached is another. In today’s world, I totally understand why you’re not putting your phone number on your page. I have it on my main business site, and it’s been there for 17 years. I had it on one of my other business sites but I don’t have it on my secondary business site at the present time. Luckily I don’t get tons of calls on that line; guess I lucked out there.
If you’re serious about getting business, you want to make it easy for your clients and potential customers to find you. Let everyone else have a contact page; this is definitely a time not to be one of the Joneses.
After reading this, if you still want to have your contact page, you do you Boo! Just because I think it works better giving potential customers a way to contact you on every page doesn’t mean you need to be me. After all, I’ve never been considered as a traditionalist when it comes to things like this. With that said, if you’re going to run a business, at least make it as easy as possible to reach you.
Another point I’m adding here that goes along with my post on my business blog celebrating my 18 years in business with 9 marketing lessons. I’m all about y’all; I hope you know that. 🙂
Hi Mitch,
I agree with you on that. Who needs a contact page?
I still have a contact page in place, but I am thinking of ditching it. Especially as it is in most cases used to spam the contact form anyway.
All the necessary info could be included in the About Me page.
Thanks for this reminder.
Have a great day,
Torsten
Torsten, before I really understood SEO stuff, which is back in 2006, I had a contact page with a script and that was the catalyst for my getting tons and tons of spam and sneaky email. Scripts weren’t secure back then and I didn’t have an idea about it, as I was a coder and pretty much nothing else at the time. Once I got rid of the script, the idea of a contact page didn’t seem to make any sense to me. Glad you agree; thanks!
In my experience, I have noted lots of people leave a website when the website doesn’t have a properly arranged contact page. People don’t like to copy an email address and send an email from their own email account. But people will contact you when you have a contact form on your website itself.
Thanks for trowing some important points.
~Sajith
It might be a country thing. I’ve never known a single American in 17 years that left a site because there wasn’t a contact page as long as they had information that allowed them to contact the site owner in front of them. Many have left when they had to search for contact information but that’s a totally different thing.
Good Post although I think the contact page is still useful specially with local businesses. Yes you would get spam but that is normal. Having a contact page is still helpful in any way.
Actually, if you’re only trying to work with local businesses a phone number’s imminently more useful for potential consumer of services. I noticed on your page you’ve given both an email address and phone number for people to reach out to you, and it’s on every page including your blog. I’d say that’s way more valuable than a contact page any day of the week. Luckily, people have choices and no one thing is important.
No one has ever used my contact page, however I do appreciate other bloggers and website owners having one!
Though my contact page has never been used, I’ll probably keep it around for a while longer!
If it works for you then it’s all good. Because I don’t like it doesn’t mean everyone has to think like me; that would be scary! lol
Yes you need a contact page
I really wonder why some bloggers make it hard to reach them
they are losing opportunities
Also don’t list your email in contact us page
just use contact form
You’re talking about blogs; I’m talking about websites. I stopped trusting scripts after I got hacked a couple of times back in the aughts. Because of that, I don’t trust it for my blogs either; having an email address not only works fine (if you don’t add a link to it), but it weeds out the people who aren’t serious about working with you.
Interesting piece. Basically what I think you are saying is that visitors need to be able to contact you ‘straight away’ if they need to. This can be by having a phone number and a form on the bottom of each page, but what is more common (in all the sites we build anyway) is that there is a call to action on each page, which leads to the Contact Page. Here in Australia we find that many visitors seek out the contact page if they are in a ‘buying’ phase, and so we make sure it is easy to find. Just my 2c
Not a form at the bottom of the page, but a clickable email address so they can send me something directly from the page they’re on. I’ve also set it up so that the email tells me which page the person was on. I’m in the middle of a redesign, but you can check out the left side of this page to see what I’m talking about; hover over the email address: ttmitchellconsulting.com