The SiteRoot team7 min read
Open a handful of small business websites and the contact pages are all the same page: a heading that says Contact Us, a form with six fields, and an embedded map. It is usually the thinnest page on the site and the one that got the least thought, because whoever built it treated it as plumbing rather than as a page.
It is worth thinking about properly, because of what the visitor is doing when they arrive on it. They have already decided you might be the one. The page is not there to persuade them, it is there to remove the last of the doubt and then get out of the way. That means it has one job, which is to make getting in touch obvious and safe, and eight things belong on it in roughly this order: your phone number as a tappable link, your email address written out, your hours and what happens outside them, where you are or which areas you cover, a short form with as few fields as you can stand, a plain statement of what happens after someone sends it, your business name and ABN, and one real photo.
What belongs on it, in order
The order matters because people scan down and stop at the first thing that will do.
- Phone number, large, near the top, as a link that starts a call when tapped.
- Email address, written out in full, not hidden behind the word "email".
- Hours, and an honest line about what happens after them.
- Where you are, or the areas you cover, in words.
- A short form, for people who do not want to ring.
- What happens next, in one sentence.
- Business name and ABN, in the footer or at the bottom of the page.
- One real photo of you, the team, the van or the shopfront.
Everything else is clutter.
Why does the phone number have to be a link
Because a phone number typed as ordinary text is a memory test.
On a phone, a number written as a link is tappable: touch it and the call starts. A number typed as plain words does nothing. The visitor has to select it, or memorise it, or switch apps and type it in. Most of them are standing somewhere inconvenient, and a good share of them just go back and tap the next business instead.
This is the single most common broken thing we find on existing sites, and it is broken for a completely innocent reason: whoever built the page typed the number as words, because as far as the screen is concerned it looks identical. Open your own contact page on a phone right now and tap your number. Either it rings or it does not, and you will know in two seconds.
How many fields should the form have
Fewer than it currently has.
Every field is a small negotiation. Name, email or phone, and one message box will do for nearly every small business. If you genuinely need a suburb to quote, ask for the suburb. If you have added a dropdown of eleven service types because it makes sorting the inbox easier, understand what you have traded: your admin convenience against some share of people who did not finish.
Two specific things to remove. Drop any field asking for a budget range, which reads as a filter and makes people feel sorted before they have spoken to anyone. And drop "How did you hear about us", which is a question for later, in person.
Where does the enquiry actually go
Ask this one seriously. It is the failure nobody notices.
An enquiry form has to land somewhere you already look. That means an email to the address you read every day, not a dashboard you sign into when you remember, and not an address that was set up during the build and forwards to a designer who has since moved on.
Test it properly. Fill in your own form as if you were a customer, with a real message, and then go and find it. If it is not in your inbox within a minute, check the junk folder, and if it is not there either you have been losing enquiries for as long as the form has existed.
While you are there, check what the visitor sees after they hit send. A blank page or a bare "submitted" is a small anxiety. One line saying you have got it and will reply by tomorrow morning is not much more work and it is the difference between someone waiting and someone ringing your competitor.
Do I need to put my address on it
If people come to you, yes, and write it out as text on the page rather than leaving it only inside an embedded map, because a map is a picture as far as most software is concerned.
If you work from home and travel to customers, do not publish your home address. Say which areas you cover instead: "We work across Geelong, Belmont, Highton and the Bellarine". That is more useful to the reader than a street address they were never going to visit, and it answers the actual question, which is whether you come out this far.
What about hours, and what about after hours
Put real hours, and then write the honest sentence about the gap.
If you finish at four and a job comes in at nine, something should say so: "Enquiries after 5pm are answered first thing the next morning". That single line converts a person who would have kept looking into a person who is happy to wait, because now they know what waiting means.
If you genuinely take calls at night, say that too, and say what counts as an emergency so the phone rings for the right reasons.
The bits nearly everyone forgets
- Your ABN. It costs nothing, it takes a line, and for anyone checking whether you are a real registered business it settles the question.
- A real photo. Not a stock handshake. A photo of the actual person who will turn up.
- A second way through. Some people will not ring and will not fill in a form. A mobile number for texting, or a line saying you are happy to be sent photos, catches them.
- The year. A copyright line stuck on 2021 quietly tells every visitor the business may not exist any more.
- The padlock. If your address bar shows a warning instead of a padlock, some browsers will put a full page warning in front of your contact page. Nothing tells you this has happened except enquiries going quiet.
A five minute test
Do this on a phone, not a computer, standing away from your desk.
- Tap the phone number. Does it start a call?
- Send yourself a real enquiry through the form. Time how long it takes to arrive.
- Read what appears after you hit send. Does it tell you anything?
- Check the hours against what you actually do this month.
- Check the year in the footer.
Most sites fail at least one of those, and the first one is the expensive one.
How SiteRoot handles it
Every site we build ships with the mechanical half of this already done, because it is not the sort of thing an owner should have to know to ask for.
Phone numbers are tap-to-call links everywhere they appear, not typed text. The enquiry form emails you at your own address, the one you gave us, so an enquiry at two in the morning is sitting in your inbox with the rest of your morning rather than in a dashboard. The page states your hours, your service area and your business details from the answers you gave, in text a person and a machine can both read. We watch that the site stays up and that its certificate has not lapsed, which is the thing that silently takes a contact page offline.
What we cannot do is know whether the address you gave us is the one you actually read. So do the test above once, today, with a real message. It is five minutes and it is the highest value five minutes here.
