QUICK TIPS

1. Contact form tips

First of all, an email address and a contact form don’t exclude each other. They both cater to different types of visitors, so keep them both.

A contact form allows people to send a quick message right then and there, without having to switch over to their email client.

Regarding contact forms, here are some useful tips I’ve written in my article on website mistakes:

• If you want as many people as possible to use your contact form (or any other form you might be using on your site), the main thing to consider is to reduce the number of fields.

• The second is to not use a weird text for the submit button, just go with the regular options: “Send”, “Go”, “Click here”, “Download”, “Add to card”, “Buy” etc., depending on the purpose of your form.

• You might sometimes be interested in obtaining people’s address, phone, birth date, number of cats owned, age, location etc., but that will only make people shy away from all the hassle. You’ll get a lot fewer messages.

• Studies have shown that you lose about 5% of your form’s conversion rate if you ask for a phone. If it’s not critical, avoid asking for it. Once you start an email conversation, you can ask for it then.

• For contact forms, “Email” and “Message” are the minimum, “Name” is usually being asked too.

• With some exceptions, one single field for “Name” is enough, do you really need to separately ask for First Name and Last Name? It’s a small thing, but they add up.

• Here are more insights on optimizing Contact pages for conversions.

The header is probably the first thing that visitors see on your site, so it’s important to avoid too much clutter.

You need to create a good impression, so even if you offer a lot of content on your site, try to organize it in a simple way. Pushing too many items in the header might confuse people and tempt them to leave the site.

Normally, blocks of text and subscribe boxes should not be found in headers. You should instead leave the header as clean as possible, properly featuring the logo and navigation.

Overwhelming visitors with too much information can affect your results: people can get confused, click on a less important element or even abandon the site. Less is more.

Going for a clean design builds credibility, and doesn’t distract anymore from your calls-to-action.

White space is important too, letting your main navigation and important content breathe and attract enough attention.