Providing contact details
Posted June 15th, 2009 by David Hamill
So you’ve got a lovely website where your customers can get all sorts of useful information. But sometimes they just want to call you or email you with a question. The approach you take to being contacted can have a big effect on customers’ perceptions of your organisation. In this post, I discuss contact details on websites.
It’s cheaper when customers use the website
If you can replace a customer phone call with a visit to your website, you’re going to save money. In the UK, it’s on average 14 times more expensive to take a phone call compared to having your customer visit your website.
Having said that, your website is just one part of the overall customer experience. Providing a good customer experience involves giving your customers what they want. So when they want your phone number, just give it to them.
We’re getting wise to poor customer service
As customers, we’ve all experienced poor customer service from companies who are trying to keep costs down by ignoring us. So some of us will do a bit of digging before we buy from a company. It’s all very well having your sales number emblazoned on the homepage. But what about the customer service number? What’s it going to be like after I’ve decided to buy?
In usability tests, I’ve noticed some people go digging for the customer service number before buying. Some even say they call these numbers, just to see what the service is going to be like. They also want to know if it’s a freephone or a local rates number.
This behaviour is a reaction to past experiences of poor customer service. The approach you take to being contacted on your website will say a lot about you to prospective customers.
When these people encounter a website that hides its contact details, they know that the customer service will be practically non-existent. So they don’t buy.
Finding contact details
People tend to look for a link that says that ‘Contact us’ when they want to phone or email the company. They’ve become used to the the contact page having this name, so this is what they look for.
This has implications when you provide your telephone number at the top of the page. The example below shows how the Talk Talk website provides its phone number.
I’ve witnessed a lot of people overlooking numbers like this in their search for the word ‘contact’. Of course, other people will notice it quite quickly. So you should never rely on this approach alone. Make sure you also provide a contact page. Thankfully, this is exactly what Talk Talk do.
Avoid the ‘Don’t contact us’ page
The contact page below from Scottish Power is an example of what I call a ‘Don’t contact us’ page. Scottish Power clearly doesn’t want to speak to its customers. We’re shoved towards an online help instead.
This page tells us a lot about the company’s approach to customer service. The link to an email contact opens a 2-page contact form that asks for every possible scrap of information about you that they can think to ask.
Hiding the phone number
A less extreme version of the ‘Don’t contact us’ page is when the contact details are smothered by alternatives to contacting the organisation. Tiscali uses such a tactic, as you can see below.
The ‘Contact us’ page here is swamped with alternatives to calling. If you want to call them, you need to find the ‘Contact us’ link on this page. Despite already being on a page of the same name. There’s nothing wrong with providing a few alternatives but these should not prevent the user from finding the contact details.
BT handles this a little better as shown below. The way the frequently asked questions are provided here is good. Unfortunately, the user experience goes down hill rapidly after this page.
BT presents the top 3 questions to the right-hand-side of the contact options. People who have exactly these questions, may read them and perhaps no longer need to call. Importantly, the alternatives don’t smother the main purpose of the page.
Positioning of contact options
On many websites, the phone number will be the preferred contact option for users. Some organisations however, prefer you to fill out a contact form. So they put this first and hide the number lower down the page.
When you put your contact form first, you’ll find that many people don’t get to see your phone number. We’re now very used to websites without phone numbers. So much so, that lots of people hit the Back button as soon as they see the dreaded contact form.
If you want your users to contact you at all, give their favoured options prominence on the contact page.
Contextual phone numbers
On some websites, presenting the phone number at the right moment will make the difference between getting a sale and losing one. In such circumstances, it’s not enough to simply provide the ability to find contact details. Instead the phone number should be presented contextually.
A lot of people research products on the internet but prefer to buy over the phone. If you want their business, you shouldn’t make it difficult for them to find your phone number. Consider providing your contact details contextually at points when they are likely to be useful. See the example below from the Share Centre.
The Share Centre associates the phone number with the call-to-action button by positioning the number alongside it and making the text the same colour. So people who don’t want to open an account online are presented with an alternative without the need to go looking for a number. This should lead to more calls from new customers.
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Tags: forms, navigation, web writing
21 Responses to “Providing contact details”
June 15th, 2009 at 11:09 am
[...] Here’s a great article from David Hamill on the value and importance of having clear and accurate contact details on your site: [...]
June 15th, 2009 at 12:12 pm
Another great article, Dave, thanks.
Something else that I’ve noticed recently (which ties in to your third point) is that companies are adding a ‘Contact us’ link in the footer of the page, at the expense of a link in the primary navigation.
This invariably leads to a hunt to find it, and it’s nearly always in tiny font too. There’s no harm in having a link in the footer, of course, alongside ‘Disclaimer’ and so on, but it’s too important to have ONLY there.
On that note, why is the ‘About us’ page hidden down there on some sites too? But that’s a different gripe…!
June 15th, 2009 at 12:23 pm
Hi Helen, Glad you liked the article. Sometimes it’s good to put the ‘About us’ link in one of these little secondary menus. This is because on many sites, the priority visitors don’t actually care about this content.
Strangely, I’ve noticed that people seem to be getting used to having a small ‘contact us’ link at the bottom. So sometimes they scroll to the very bottom just to find it. The suitability of having a ‘Contact us’ link on the primary menu depends on the website and what it’s for. Often these little links fair better than the big phone number on the top of every page.
June 15th, 2009 at 3:23 pm
[...] Providing contact details via Good Usability [...]
June 15th, 2009 at 3:28 pm
Hi Dave,
Nice post. I was just wondering what your thoughts would be when designing a site for an online only product. Would it just be a case of making explicitly clear that the only form of contact is through a web form on the homepage and replacing terms such as ‘contact us’ with ‘write to us’ or ‘email us’.
Or can you think of any other best practices for this situation.
Cheers,
Dan.
June 15th, 2009 at 3:41 pm
Hi Dan, the first question is whether or not you should have online only contact details. In some cases it might be just a commercial reality that you can’t have anything other than an email contact. But me feeling is that many organisations opt for this too easily for their own convenience rather than that of their customers/users. I’d recommend providing an email address as well as your standard contact form as they can get a bit annoying for people who don’t want to use them.
I’d still stick with the term ‘Contact us’ because you want your words to represent the thing your user is looking for and not solely what is available. They don’t yet know that they have no choice to email so if you say ‘email us’ they might continue to look for the main contact page.
I would also give them some indication of how long it’ll take for you to get back to them.
June 15th, 2009 at 4:29 pm
I enjoyed this article. I had an “a-ha” moment in the section about the hidden contact information; I use the “find the background information before you check out the product” trick when evaluating a new, unknown site.
With all the inexpensive “Web 2.0″ products out there, contact information is a good way to sort the chaff… I say bye-bye at once to those who only have “info at domainname” as a contact choice and nothing else. No About – not even information about where you are located on the planet! And you want my credit card info? No, no, no! Maybe we should be grateful for these mistakes. It narrows the playing field!
Oh, another issue with the tiny font size for contact information in the footer: it is often in a light color, such as light gray on white. Combined with some flat-screen technology, visibility plummets. I then drag the mouse to highlight the area, and this reveals text.
June 29th, 2009 at 10:12 am
Hi David,
Thank you for your nice post. I keep wondering about one question that slightly relates to your topic of contextual phone numbers.
How about the usability when more than one phone number is displayed on the page. In our company we have different phone numbers for different processes (service, sales) and so they are both displayed with a textual label in front.
My guess is that users do not see the difference and just call the first one in sight. I wonder what your experience is in this matter and if others have dealt with the same problem.
June 29th, 2009 at 10:26 am
Hi Pascal. You’ll always get people who call the first phone number they see. If you’re showing numbers contextually you should only need to use one. Because only one of those numbers will be contextual at any given time. If you’re talking about the website from your email address, I can give you a quick piece of advice about how that contact page works. Just email me at web@goodusability.co.uk
July 13th, 2009 at 3:07 pm
Big companies do tend to use a ‘Don’t contact us’ page. No phone number of any kind. Just a FAQ and a contact form or they make you register before you can even fill out a form
August 11th, 2009 at 2:32 pm
[...] Providing contact details; [...]
September 1st, 2009 at 1:07 pm
[...] use of the internet. David Hamill (yet again) saves the day by writing about the basics of providing contact details. In this article he discusses many different ways to include information that should not be left [...]
September 2nd, 2009 at 5:54 am
[...] Providing contact details; [...]
September 4th, 2009 at 4:20 am
[...] Providing contact details; [...]
September 4th, 2009 at 9:54 am
[...] This article was originally published on David’s blog, Good Usability. [...]
September 28th, 2009 at 11:57 am
[...] Providing contact details [...]
November 16th, 2009 at 9:26 pm
Very useful info, thank you David.
You have very good examples of the invalid “Contact us” pages.
This will allow me to avoid many mistakes in the future.
Thank you for your blog and Good Luck!
Alex
December 10th, 2009 at 7:57 pm
Nice. Very tired of worthless contact pages with just an email form. I especially like to find contact pages without even a name or business name. A very common occurrence. At that point, I always wonder, why did they bother creating the page.
July 28th, 2011 at 12:36 am
Hi David,
While I’m fully aware this article is pretty old, I still share your opinion about the “contact us” placement and naming… What I wanted to ask you is how did you come to this conclusion! Did you find some unquestionable piece of research or simply mashed up some other articles?
I’ve ended up in an argument about “contact us” and I need as much research as possible
Thanks!
July 28th, 2011 at 12:10 pm
Hi Andy,
It’s not really based on anything I’ve read but instead my observations from the usability testing I carry out for my clients. There isn’t enough research out there to resolve every design debate in the world I’m afraid. If we all had to rely on previous research before we did anything there would be nothing to research in the first place.
November 3rd, 2011 at 4:50 am
This article is over 2 years old and still relevant
Good on ya Davo!
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