What to include in your contact page

Not just for your website, but on Substack, too!

Sep 06, 2024

Welcome to Finding Simple & Calm, a place where I share my journey to living a slower life when everything about my life says otherwise. I write about the realities of simple living, motherhood, and being neurodivergent. I’m also passionate about creative small businesses, and I love writing about, and teaching, methods on how to reduce the overwhelm, spend less time doing the tedious business-y stuff, and more time being creative. I hope you can join me?

Short:

Your contact page can be the difference between your next client or not. Contact pages are super important for service based businesses, but they’re also useful for product based businesses too. Here’s what you should include on your contact page:

Why someone should contact you, and how long it’ll take before you reply.
Your name
Email address
Working/ opening hours
Phone number (if needed)
Address (if you have a physical space for your business that people will visit)
Contact form
Social media links
An invite to join your mailing list

Long:

A contact page is such an important piece of your website, although it’s often overlooked. Making it as easy as possible for customers or clients to get in touch with you is the aim.

Why they should contact you:

Write a few lines about the types of things that your customer/ client should contact you about. For service based businesses, this could be to enquire about working together. For product based businesses, this could be to update a shipping address or to inform you that their item arrived damaged.

It’s good practice to include how long it’ll take for you to reply to them. Make sure to mention if your emails are monitored over the weekend and on evenings so they know when to expect a reply from you.

Example:

Are you ready to work together? That’s great! Complete the form below in as much detail as possible to begin the process. I’ll be in touch within 2 working days to arrange our first meeting.

or…

Do you need to update your shipping info, or need to chat to me about your order? Complete the contact form below and I’ll be in touch within 24 hours (excluding weekends). Thank you, Sophie.

Your name:

Including your name adds a personal touch so that the customer/ client knows that they are talking directly to you.

Email address:

A direct email address is a good option to include so that people can email you with a quick question, rather than taking the time to complete the full contact form.

Working/ opening hours:

This is great if you have a physical space that you operate from, such as a shop or an office which has opening times. But it’s also really useful to let customers know when you’re working.

For me, I work 3 days a week because that’s when I have childcare. I could check emails on the other 2 days, but I can’t guarantee that. Therefore, I inform my clients that my working hours are Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday - 09:45 to 14:15. Anything outside of those times I won’t be around to respond to messages or emails.

Let your customers know if you’re closed on certain days, if your open at the weekend, if you stay open later on a certain day etc.

Phone number and address:

This may not be relevant to you if you work from home, and you’d like to keep this information private. However, make sure to explain that your preferred method of communication is via email.

You could also mention the area where you live, not so much your exact address if that feels too much. I’ve written that I’m based in North Yorkshire on my website. North Yorkshire is a massive county, but it also narrows down the part of the UK in which I live. This feels safe for me.

If you have a physical space that customers can come to you, then include your address and phone number on your contact page.

Contact form:

This will vary depending on what your business is, and what information you need from your customer/client. The aim is to gather what you need to be able to move onto the next step. For example, you could include the following fields:

their name
their email address
their website or social media links
which service they’re interested in
a brief summary of what they do
a brief summary of what they need your help with

For product based businesses, you may just include a name, email address and brief summary field. If that’s all the information you need, there’s no need to overcomplicate things and include a lengthy contact form.

Social media links:

Include links to the social media platforms that you use and are active on. There’s no need to include a link to your Instagram account if you haven’t used it in 2 years, and it’s very outdated.

Mailing list invite:

Finish off your contact form with an invitation to join your mailing list. Let them know what being on your mailing list means, what they’ll get and how often you’ll email them. You can embed a sign up form to most websites, or simply include a link to a landing page sign up form.

Any other important information:

It’s good practice to include anything that your customer/ client may need to know. For example, if you’re a product based business, it may be useful for your customers to know your Christmas shipping dates. Including shipping information is really helpful to include on a contact form anyway, so that your customers don’t have to go digging for that information.

I hope you’ve found this useful. Feel free to ask any questions in the comments section, or leave your link to your contact page for me to look at if you’d like some feedback.