WordPress Bloggers: Are You Ignoring Your Visitors?

The humble contact page is far more powerful than you think. If you don’t have one, you should install one on your site immediately. If you do have one, you should read this article and make sure that you are getting the most out of it.

The Basics

Assuming that your theme doesn’t come with contact form functionality, the first thing you need to do is get a good plugin. We could spend all debating the pros and cons of the multitude of plugins out there, but that seems like a waste of time, doesn’t it? I have two plugins to recommend:

Contact Form 7

Simple, uncluttered, and easy to use. If you’re not interested in fancy bells and whistles, Contact Form 7 will get the job done for you.

Custom Contact Forms

If however you are a big fan of bells and whistles, you’ll love Custom Contact Forms. It’s got more options than you could possibly wish for.

You can go for either of the above plugins – it is mainly down to personal taste. They are both highly rated. If you do want to spend time deliberating the relative merits of all of the popular WordPress contact form plugins, check this out: 20 Free Contact Form Plugins For WordPress.

Pimping Your Contact Page

Your contact page should be more than just a form for people to fill in. A very special breed of visitor clicks on the contact page. Generally speaking, they are highly targeted – i.e. they are very interested in your blog. Their interest may be positive or negative, but either way, you can take the opportunity to further engage with the visitor.

Think of it this way – if someone wants to contact you, they’d probably like to connect with you on social networks too. They might also want to sign up to your newsletter. Take the opportunity to give them the option! Perhaps even ask them to contact you via Twitter or Facebook rather than use the contact form. These days, some people use Facebook instead of email, so they might be delighted to contact you in such a manner.

Bricks And Mortar Based Blog?

You may wish to include a map of your business on your blog’s contact page. Luckily, Google Maps makes it an absolute snip. Just type in your address, click the embed button (circled below)…

…then just copy the embed code and paste it into your WordPress blog’s HTML editor:

Et voila!

Pretty snazzy huh?

Don’t Forget The Small Print

Don’t forget to include your address, telephone number, and other contact details (as appropriate). Some people still like to go about things the old fashioned way, so make sure that you are catering for them.

Over To You

Are there any other special little things that you like to do with your contact page? Or is it sat in a dark corner of your blog, lonely and unloved? Let us know in the comments section!

Creative commons photo courtesy of Tom Raftery

Tags:

• Facebook
• forms
• maps
• social media