Day 13: Dale Carnegie once said, “We are evaluated and classified by these four contacts; what we do, how we look, what we say and how we say it.” I’ve got no beef with that, although I’d add who you hang around with to the list. So, if this is mostly true, why is the Contact page on almost all websites an afterthought, vanilla, boring, poorly designed and even clumsily written? I don’t have an answer; this was just a rhetorical question.

But the fact remains, web visitors leave web pages in droves by the second. Usability king Jacob Neilsen has more than taught us our chances of web page survival are slim, but there is a glimmer of hope if the visitor spends 10 seconds on a page, because if they spend 10, they’ll spend 20, and if they spend 20, there’s a chance they’ll spend 30.

So, after you’re finished with this web page, go directly to your Contact page and see if it contains the elements to hold your interest for 10 seconds and then 20 seconds. Is there more there than just your contact information? There should be. I like a strong headline at the top, some lead in copy before the contact information, some graphical element like a photo or a designed testimonial from a client, plus your Google map. That should be enough to hold some interest.

Now, let me give you an example. I recently wrote this copy for a Contact page promoting a college’s student recruitment efforts for manufacturing classes:

It's not Your Father's Factory Anymore. That’s because it’s going to be your factory. You’re going to raise the skill bar by building the one machine that outperforms all machines. You. And we’ll do it with you, so contact us today and we’ll get you the information you need tomorrow.

There are many techniques you can incorporate to increase the time on your Contact page, but if you’re thinking in the direction of form submissions, checklists and a captcha if you’re a B2B enterprise, that’s just not going to do anything other than turn people away.