A well-done website contact page gives potential customers plenty of ways to reach you

A website contact page seems so boring and basic. I mean, let’s face it, it’s no home page. But the contact page is a vital link between you and your customers—a place for you to show them how responsive you are to their needs, questions and concerns.

Michiel Heijmans, chief operating officer and partner at Yoast, a web optimization firm based in Wijchen, Netherlands, has some thoughts about what makes a great contact page—and plenty of ideas about mistakes to avoid. He shared his thoughts recently on the company’s SEO Blog.

• Form failures: Too many companies put a “Contact Us” form on their site and call it good. It’s not good. As Heijmans says, some people are confused or intimidated by long forms and there can be technical difficulties like unresponsive forms (especially on mobile sites), broken links or annoying captcha codes. Sleep Savvy would add that such forms can feel impersonal, leaving visitors to wonder how all that information they’re giving you might be used. That said, forms are helpful for aggregating information and allow you to track visitors, so use them, but give people plenty of other ways to contact you. And make sure every person who fills out a form gets a quick confirmation that it was submitted properly—and a rapid response to their query.

• Full disclosure: For mattress retailers, complete contact information means phone numbers, email addresses and street addresses for each store location and your company headquarters (if not at a store), plus phone numbers and email addresses for special departments like delivery, warranty and customer service. Adding social media links is fine, too, but only if you diligently monitor and regularly respond to all your social feeds.

• Coy ain’t cool: Make it easy for people to find your contact information. Heijmans suggests adding the “Contact” menu item to both your main and footer menus. And, he says, “I’d like the title of that page to be ‘Contact’ or a variation of that, like ‘Contact Us’ or ‘Get in Touch.’ Don’t use ‘Let’s Talk Business’ or whatever strange sentence that won’t cover the immediate goal of the page. It will confuse people. … Make it clear that this is the page where they can get in contact with you.”

• Stay current: “Like all your other pages, your contact page needs some tender love and care from time to time,” Heijmans says. “Moving offices? Adjust your website. New sales rep? Change profile picture and email address. Make sure your information is accurate at all times.”