Over the past few days I have made several mockups for clients and on each I have reached the contact page design and sat back and thought “there must be something else I can add in here…”
The standard contact form usually has two columns, one has a wide contact form, the other has phone numbers, social profiles and maybe an address, some might split into three columns and include a map. These solutions of course are time tested and can be made to look aesthetically pleasing and serve its purpose as it should.
The extra wide contact form is my main gripe in this design style, if you have other forms on the rest of your site the forms will not be as wide as your contact form so it doesn’t fit with the design flow, but what is our alternative solution as designers? Do we add a few paragraphs about the contact page, include price lists, add our skills on this page to ensure the would be form submitter is emailing you with all the info they need?
I don’t have the answers, its perhaps a question that doesn’t need an answer. I just want something new and want the contact page to be as cool and exciting as the rest of the design, is it just me?
Your right, but I don’t think asking for more information would be a good idea even though more info is definitely better. The contact form should be short and sweet, and as it is more often than not a first contact for potential clients, they may not even make it to the end of the form if they have to fill in more than the essentials.
A map for the physical business is good practice and i tend to add alternative contacts such as an email address, twitter and other networks I can not only be contacted by, but interacted with.
In the case of a wide responsive type layout, having input fields span 80% of the page does seem like an overkill of space and in that case having open space to the right may just have to suffice.
Definately an interesting subject!
Yeah if the business has enough content it works, but just as mega wide form kinda kills the look you might be trying to achieve!
What about dropping the contact page?
We had the same issue with my company website and the designer decided to drop the contact page and to add just some contact links in the footer.
Is that bad to you?
Dam
That is a superb idea! Many of my clients projects I could totally get away with killing the contact page and opting for a “sexy” footer.
Thanks for the input Damiano
Some great points here! One problem I could see with the contact info/form placed globally in the footer is your ability to track conversions / set up goal funnels in the traditional fashion of page 1 > page 2 > page 3 > goal completed.
Definitely got my brain buzzing at the moment
Very good point! Hmm that’s got me thinking now!
While I hear you on the sexy footer contact form (I love to use them) BUT there are a ton of users who even though there is a extremely obvious contact form on the footer of each page they will still scan the navigation bar for a CONTACT link.
And Climax Media’s point is a good one about knowing where the contact was initiated for funnel purposes – but you could just include a hidden var that specifies the page name and location of the contact form when it is submitted.
Would a modal window that pops either on a footer link or off of a standard nav bar link be another option?
-Jon
Something like that could work, modals can be styled up nicely, maybe something like Fancybox?
It’s food for thought though, cheers Jon
You can track mailto link clicks using Google Analytics with an extra line or two of JavaScript. There’s your conversions.
Awesome Tom, that solves that one!