Over the past few weeks I have been trialling having contact forms on all the main pages of my site and boy has it increased the amount of emails I have received, not only from potential clients, but also from people just wanting to say thank you or a friendly hello, and let’s face it, who doesn’t like hearing compliments?
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So I ask, why should we have only one contact page? There are so many more benefits from having more than one contact page;
- Potential clients have an easier way to contact you.
- You get more email. (Good or a bad thing, that is for you to decide.)
- More clients mean more money.
- Less clicks for the user to find your contact details.
- People that may not have went the extra click will now more likely contact you.
What pages should you put contact forms on?
You should look at your site statistics to see what page/s are your most popular and you also must take into consideration what the page is for, for instance you may not want a form on your ‘Featured Articles’ Page as it is not appropriate.
Where to place each form will vary from blog to blog but personally I put them on my five main pages which are my About Page, my Hire Me Page, my Design Portfolio page, my Contact Page, and my Testimonials page.
You will also notice on my contact page I use a standard form however on my hire page I ask questions about budget, deadlines, etc that relate to my profession.
How do I get a contact form?
I personally use a WordPress Plugin called Cforms which is great however there are many more out there! With Cforms you can customise a variety of forms very easily and then easily place them onto any page with a click of a button.
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Track What Pages People Contact You From
With the Cforms plugin (and most others) each email you receive looks like the screenshot above. It will tell you exactly what page the form has been sent from along with other details such as the date and IP address of the sender. You will notice the email above has been sent from my testimonials page along with the answers to each question. This is very useful as you can see what pages people are sending the most emails from.
So… why have just one contact page?
Yeah, I tried this by adding it to the end of blog posts about my work, and I got a lot more emails. Can’t remember why, but I took it off, I think I thought it made the page look too messy.
I already have a form on a few pages, but I might add a form to a few more pages, because I quite like getting emails 🙂
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Good post, glad to hear it’s helped you with clients. I’m on board with you Liam. I do like getting emails, but I’m not sure I want the look of a contact form on every page. Although if I had my portfolio on MyInkBlog then, that would be a great place to have one.
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Liam,
Yeah blog posts are a bit messy however I have put it on my Why Logo Design Does Not Cost $5.00 post as an impulse “get a free quote” tactic and it has got me at least one job from it so glad I put it there (not to say they wouldn’t have pressed my contact page, but it just shows it can and does work.
Andrew,
I think having it on a few pages is OK and has proved successful for me… the design I have does fit quite nicely into the page though and it is at the bottom of each page out of the way from text so these are other things one must consider before just plonking out a few new contact forms.
Joey,
Well you are going strong with 6 comments so far!
I used to do that (link to contact page on each page) but having more forms is working for me now. There is the same amount of maintenance needed for 100 forms as it is 1 form as it is all controlled under one control panel which makes it very easy to control.
Jon,
Yeah, sometimes emails just never end but it has to be done.
Beaulys,
On select pages I believe it can be quite strategic, much alike how some websites have the phone number displayed on every page. A CV is quite different in regards to having contact forms as when reading a CV the reader has a choice of how to contact you however online, the only choice is email in most cases, especially when clients live overseas (and when you live on an island, that occurs quite often! 😉 )
Doug,
What CMS do you use Doug? I do not find it as bugging people, I find it more as a convenience however there are always different opinions as we can see in the comments here.
I just found this site. A lot of interesting information here, I am sure I will be dissecting this for quite a while.
Anyways, as far as a contact form I usually just have one on one page, and link to it from every other page. I guess having a specific page set up for client contacts, or fan mail contacts might increase your mail a bit, but its also a lot more forms for you to maintain and take care of
That’s interesting! I never thought of adding a contact form on other pages of my portfolio site, I do link to my contact page from pretty much all the other pages of the site though. Ok, maybe the last thing I need right now is more emails hehe 🙂
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hi friend ur blog seems to be good .. i ve started my blog just now so my friend i want u to visit my website frequently nd post some comments which ll be helpful to me pal and if u wish add as a friend of urs nd of sure I ll be visiting ur website daily ….. my website name s http://frendzz.com
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Well… I don’t know if it is a good thing to have a contact form “here and there but not here” dredged on a website.
I’m not a webdesigner but if I was, I will not find it very ergonomic or user-friendly, but almost disturbing. It’s like putting your phone number in every rubric of your CV. That’s boring.
Ah, your WordPress people get all the cool stuff, lol. I usually just link people to my portfolio site’s contact page. I have one link to that in the “About Me” section on my sidebar. I really don’t want to be bugging people constantly to contact me. I have enough of that already with the “subscribe” links.
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I have one site that has about 5 contact forms on for varies quotes, and it’s both a blessing and a curse. It’s easier for people to contact you for a specific job – answering the right questions, but it also means spambots and spammers find them a lot more.
Overall though, I’m a fan of having a few contact forms for very specific uses…it benefits both you and clients—if presented correctly.
SideNote: Cforms plugin rocks 😉
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Andrew,
It hasn’t gotten to the point for it being a curse for me, I haven’t had any spam at all… Cforms is great and yes you were right, it is how you present it that is the key 🙂
Doug,
CMS = Content Management System, ie. WordPress, Drupal, etc.
What’s CMS?
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I’m using Blogger so I would assume that doesn’t apply to me.
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COOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
CONTACT ME
That’s interesting. I wish I had built my site using WordPress but I’ve long since built it the traditional html way which means I would have to recode an already monstrously sized web site to tackle this.
If I had to do over again, WordPress would surely be the way to go I think.
Thanks for the great post.
Nice Article,
Your post make me to rethink about my contact position in my web!
Thanks Jacob 🙂