Obtaining contact info is a common reason for visiting a website. By evaluating the needs of your visitors, you can strategically present your contact information for the benefit of people and search engines. Know your visitors and the type of contact information they commonly desire. The hours of operation are important for a local restaurant, and the phone number is a necessity for a delivery service. Contact information is an incredibly important part of small business web design. By identifying the most useful info to your visitors, you can design the user experience to conveniently provide info when needed.
Note: This blog post covers the basics that you can manage in your WordPress website, but you should know that we do other things behind the scenes to help communicate with search engines. This is referred to as microformatting, schema or structured data.
Think Local SEO
Keeping contact information accessible is also helpful for search engine optimization. By reviewing the details of your website, search engines can identify useful aspects of your business like where it is located, the hours of operation, the phone number, and so on. This insight from your website can help determine when your results are provided. For example, a pizza parlor in Portland who is open late is a relevant result for the search of “late night pizza in portland”, and is more likely to show up if they share their location and hours of operation.
The Header
The header of a website is always easy to see and is accessible from all pages. This is a convenient place to put information that is out of the way of the main content, but obvious to find when needed. Contact information within your header communicates that you are easily accessible and responsive to your visitors needs.
Many mobile users will only be visiting your site to identify the location or contact information. They will be pleasantly surprised if your contact info is conveniently located within the header to find right away. Setup the phone number to enable calling for mobile users with a single click.
The Footer
Like the header, the footer is accessible from every page. But the footer is a more subtle approach for sharing information. The contents in this location are harder to find, but accessible for the searching visitor or returning user. If your contact information is a necessary resource, we suggest putting it in a more expected location.
The Contact Page
The most obvious place for visitors to expect your contact info is on the contact page. It has become standard that people will assume exists. If you don’t have a contact page, then your intended method of contact better be clearly identifiable. Add your address, Google Map, phone number, and hours of operation to this page. Sometimes visitors want to contact you with a specific question. Make it easy for visitors to send inquiries with a contact form. Incoming messages can be sent to you through email, and saved to your website within a database. Contact Form 7 is my favorite software for constructing custom forms. Emails can be identified by spam robots, and should be left off your website.
Google My Business
Using Google services, you can have your business contact info easily accessible from the Google search engine, Google Maps, and 3rd party resources of all kinds. By setting up your business account and sharing your contact information, Google is able to present this info in accessible ways when they expect a visitor needs it. For example, your hours of operation can be readily visible when someone searches for your business name within your city. Users can also obtain your location on Google Maps for quick directions. Google My Business is a convenient way to share your contact info with the world. Let us know if you would like assistance setting up your Google My Business account.
