Creating Your Website: Contact Page & Forms

Now that your about page is up, let’s do an easier page – the contact page. It’s a standard page that almost every website has, and it’s what people often look for when they want to reach out to you for projects. Let’s start off with some tips and ideas….

You can have a super simple contact page with just a form and nothing else, or you can add some different pieces to the mix.

In addition to just the standard contact form, you may want to include other contact information on the page, such as your links to social media accounts so they can reach you there for quick questions and comments. A lot of people will type out a tweet before they fill out a contact form. It’s a good way for them to get to know you before they’ve committed to working with you.

Only Ask For What You Need to Know

No one wants to fill out 100 fields of unnecessary data. Only ask for what you need to know to get started. Keep your forms simple and short so that you get the best results and people are more likely to fill things out.

Just the facts and basics. If you don’t need a mailing address, don’t ask for one.

Keep the form as short as you can, but include fields for the information you know you’re going to need in order to properly answer questions.

If you work with local clients (or if you want to) you can include your address on this page to receive mail, but unless you want people knocking on the door I strongly recommend a P.O. Box or one of those mail service suites inside the UPS store.

Likewise, you can include a phone number on this page if you accept phone calls with questions about your services. You could also add your Skype information here, in which case they could call or type.

You may also want to include your contact email as text on the page, just in case someone prefers to send a quick direct email without the form.

Setting up a Contact Form with Jetpack

If you installed the JetPack plugin earlier, there’s a form creator ready to use inside that plugin. That’s one of the reasons I really like Jetpack, it has a lot of features included with it and I don’t need to install additional plugins for every other thing.

When you create a new post or page you’ll see a little button to insert a form next to your Add Media button in both Text and Visual editing modes.

You just click that and a little widget opens for you to create your form fields. You can add new fields, erase ones you don’t want, and decide which fields are required.

The forms you set up with JetPack will follow the CSS styleguide of your blog theme, so they’ll automatically change to match any time you change themes.

Setting Up Floating Contact Form

For something a little different and to maybe grab some attention, you can try out the floating contact form that follows your site visitor down the page, encouraging them to contact you and letting them know that you’re interested to hear from them. The plugin for this is called Slick Contact Forms.

I have this one set up so that it starts out as just a little bubble on the side of the page:

When they click on the little bubble, it opens up into a full form:

My wording on that form needs some work, it’s super stale and boring. I need to get in there and revise that, but you get the idea of how it might look.

Collecting Voice Messages Directly on Your Site as a Way of Contacting You

You’ve probably seen this around the web. The SpeakPipe Plugin adds a tab to the side of your website where people can click and record a voice message directly.

The plugin used to be entirely free to use, but that’s not the case anymore. It’s free to use for receiving short 90-second-long messages, but if you want people to be able to leave longer messages or be able to store more than 20 messages, then you have to upgrade to a paid account starting at $7/month. I recommend starting out with the free level account and then upgrade if you find you need more space or if you find your potential clients need more than the 90-second length to record a message with a question.

Other Plugins To Consider

If you aren’t using Jetpack, there are plenty of contact form specific plugins available for WordPress.

Just go to Add New Plugins and search. Look at the options for each to decide which one might best suit your needs.

Don’t Limit Contact Forms to Just One Page

You can have more than one contact form! Sure, you want to have your standard contact us page, but you can also incorporate forms in other places on your website.

Forms can be a really useful tool, especially when you’re taking new clients. Depending on the services you’re offering and whether you do consultations and intake interviews with potential clients, you can use a form to gather necessary information before you talk with them so that you’re prepared and can discuss things specific to their needs.

You might include contact forms on your About page, your services page, your rates page, or maybe you have a contact form in the sidebar of your site all the time. Depending on your goals and what you want people to most do, add a contact form anywhere that it’s appropriate.

Include FAQs and Useful Resources

If you find yourself getting a lot of the same questions via the contact form, you may want to add those to your FAQ section, as well as in a summary right at the bottom of the contact form page itself. Answer before they ask and they’re going to see you as an authority on the subject they need help with, making them more likely to reach out to you for services.

Test All the Forms You Set Up!

This is a super important step to adding any kind of form. TEST to make sure the form is working properly. Either have a friend fill it out as a test or open an incognito tab and fill out the form with random information and click send. Then check your email to make sure everything worked the way you expected.

Homework and Action Steps for This Section:

• Create a contact page.
• Add forms to your website where appropriate.
• TEST your forms!

Recommended Resources:

If you KNOW that you really want to create a virtual assistant business that you love and you’d like an all-in-one solution to get the resources and support you need to get this business started -at a price you can afford-
join us in the VA Startup Mastermind!

This is a small group of folks who are just getting started with their virtual assistant services business online. There are weekly accountability posts, loads of resources, and so much more being added to the group on a regular basis. You can post any time to get feedback or ask questions about anything you need help with to get your business off the ground and growing.