Webifiable

One of the primary goals of a website should be to create approachability. So how can you use your contact page to help create that approachability?

Fortunately, it’s not terribly difficult. You simply need to provide plenty of contact information. You need to make it ridiculously easy to contact you using whichever method your website visitors prefer.

So what methods should you have on there?

Email address

Too many websites have a form on their contact page, but no actual email address. I used to be an advocate of that, having received thousands of spam emails myself as a result. But time heals all wounds, including my inconvenienced email inbox. I now believe removing my email address was the wrong solution to the problem, unnecessarily inconveniencing my website visitors.

Now I have a great spam filter, thanks to Gmail. So website visitors can still contact me through my email address, and my spam filter helps make sure that only those real people get through.

Phone number

Many people still prefer making phone calls over sending emails. For those people, I would make sure you have your phone number somewhere fairly prominent on your site. If not on every page, at least have it on the contact page.

Email form

Of course, there are people who may visit your website while at the library, or maybe at a friend’s house. For them, it may be much easier to fill out a form on your website rather than open up webmail, copy and paste your email address in, then write the email address. It’s simple to accommodate these individuals as well with a simple web form.

Here are some additional contact methods you should consider putting on your contact page:

• Mailing address
• Physical address
• Map
• Instant messenger screen name
• Facebook profile link
• Facebook fan page link
• LinkedIn profile link
• Twitter account link

Don’t have all of those available to you? You should. In fact, you actually do. If you don’t have an account with any of those, the good news is you can create one in less than a half hour.

Done? Okay, great. Now go update your contact page on your website. It should take just a few minutes, and will go a long way towards creating approachability with your contact page.