Most contact pages are built in five minutes at the end of a website project: a form, an email address, perhaps a map, and the word “Contact” at the top. Then they are never looked at again. Meanwhile visitors arrive on that page with a real question, see a form with eight fields and no idea when anyone will reply, and close the tab.
The contact page is where a visitor who has already chosen you decides whether it is worth the effort. It does not need to be clever. It needs to answer the few things people want to know before they press send.
What a visitor wants to know on a contact page
Put yourself in the place of someone about to get in touch. They are usually asking themselves:
- How can I reach you, and which way is quickest?
- Will anyone actually reply, and when?
- Do you work in my area, or with businesses like mine?
- What happens after I send this?
A good contact page answers all four in the first screen, before the form.
Channels: show them all, and say what each is for
List every way you can genuinely be reached: phone, WhatsApp, email, the form, and your address if people visit. Make the phone number a tappable link on mobile and also readable as plain text. Show the email address as text people can copy, not only as a link that opens a mail app they may not use.
A short line next to each one helps people choose. For example: “Phone for urgent jobs”, “WhatsApp if you want to send photos”, “The form for detailed quotes”. If you are still deciding which channels to offer, our comparison of chat, WhatsApp and phone may help.
Only list channels someone checks. An old email address that forwards nowhere, or a landline that rings in an empty office, is worse than leaving it off.
Hours, area served and who you work with
State your working hours plainly, including your time zone if you serve customers in other countries. If you close for lunch or on a particular weekday, say so. People are far more patient when they know the rules.
Then say where you work. A business with a shop or office should give the full address, written the same way it appears on your Google Business Profile and other listings. A service-area business can list the towns or districts it covers instead. Either way, it saves you enquiries you cannot take, and it reassures the right people that you are local to them.
If you only take certain kinds of work, such as commercial clients or jobs above a certain size, a polite line here filters enquiries before they reach your inbox.
Say what happens next
This is the part most contact pages skip, and it is often the reason people hesitate. A form with no explanation feels like posting a letter into a hole. Two or three sentences fix it:
“We reply to every enquiry within one working day. For most jobs we will ask a couple of questions, then send a quote or suggest a visit. There is no charge for the quote.”
Write your own version, and only promise what you actually do. If replies take two working days, say two working days. An honest wait is fine. A broken promise is not.
A map only if it helps
An embedded map is useful when people need to find you in person: a shop, a clinic, a showroom with tricky parking. For a business that works from home or visits customers, a map of your street adds little and may reveal more than you want. It also adds weight to the page and can slow it down on mobile.
If you do include one, add written directions too. “Second floor, above the pharmacy, entrance on the side road” is often more useful than the pin itself.
How long should the form be?
Every field you add is a small reason for someone to give up. But a form that is too short leaves you replying with a list of questions, which slows the whole thing down. The balance depends on your work.
| Keep | Usually optional | Usually drop |
|---|---|---|
| Name, a way to reply (phone or email), the message | Area or postcode, type of service, preferred contact time | Company size, how did you hear about us, a second phone number, a required budget field |
Some practical points:
- Let people choose phone or email rather than demanding both, unless you truly need both.
- Use a dropdown for service type if you offer several. It helps you route the enquiry and helps people describe what they want.
- Make the message box a decent size, with a hint such as “Tell us what you need and where”.
- Mark optional fields as optional, rather than marking required ones with a tiny asterisk people miss.
- Say why you collect anything sensitive, and link your privacy policy near the submit button.
The thank-you message
After someone presses send, they should see a clear confirmation on screen, not a small line of grey text that is easy to miss. A good one repeats the promise from the page and gives a fallback:
“Thanks, [first name]. We have your message and will reply by the end of the next working day. If it is urgent, call us on [number].”
Many form plugins can also send the visitor an automatic email copy of their enquiry. That reassures them it went through and gives them a record. Keep it plain, so it does not look like marketing.
A separate thank-you page, rather than a message on the same page, also makes it simpler to count completed enquiries in your analytics.
Spam protection that does not block real people
Once a form is live, bots will find it. The temptation is to add the hardest challenge you can find, but puzzles and repeated image tests turn away genuine customers too, especially on a phone. Start with the quiet methods: a hidden honeypot field, a time check, or an invisible challenge that only shows a puzzle when something looks suspicious. Our guide to stopping contact form spam goes through the options in order.
Test that enquiries actually arrive
A contact page can look perfect and still lose every message, because the notification email never reaches you. Website emails often land in spam, or are silently rejected, especially when the site sends mail without proper authentication for your domain.
- Send a test enquiry yourself every month, and after any plugin, theme or hosting change.
- Check it arrives in the inbox someone reads, not just the one listed in the plugin settings years ago.
- Look in the spam folder the first time, and mark it as not spam if it lands there.
- Keep a copy of entries on the website itself, if your form plugin allows it, so nothing is lost when email fails.
If test messages are not arriving, our post on a WordPress contact form not working covers the usual causes and fixes.
A quick check of your own page
Open your contact page on your phone and read only what fits on the first screen. Can you see how to reach you, when you reply and where you work? Then fill in the form as a customer would, and time how long it takes for the notification to reach you. Those two minutes will tell you more than any checklist.
The contact page is the last step in a longer path. Our guide to getting local customers online covers how people find and choose a local business before they ever reach it.
If your form is not delivering enquiries, or you would like someone to review the page and tidy it up, you can get in touch with us and describe what you are seeing. We will tell you what we would change, and what we would leave alone.
Next in this series: Answering Website Enquiries Before They Go Cold
