How Important Is A Contact Us Page?

[austtr]

If you have a traditional bricks and mortar business, its a no-brainer that your business website would have a "Contact Us" page with the address, phone and fax numbers, location map etc etc.

But if your business is purely online and there is no physical address, how important do you think it is, from an SEO perspective, to provide a Contact Us feature, even if it is only an email address link? Would you think it's possible that missing contact info might be factored into the algos?

I'm looking at a parcel of 10 sites, with one going well and nine suffering. Just realized the good site is the only one with contact info and I'm wondering if that might have some relevance.... bit of a stretch I know but stranger things have happened!

[piatkow]

In some jurisdictions it is a legal requirement.

No idea about SEO but lack of contact details gives out a strong negative message to me as a customer.

[ohno]

As above, no contact details = no trust IMO. We are ecom & have phone number & email links on every page, we also have a contact page with phone numbers & online chat. I'd say 10% of visitors hit the contact page & actually call us.

[aakk9999]

But if your business is purely online and there is no physical address

If it is a business, there must be some kind of contact. I agree with posts above - I would never buy from a business if there is no contact info. What happens if I am not happy with the product? Or if product does not arrive? Who do I contact? Where do I complain?

And even though there is no physical shop, there must be some office address - even if the contact info says "Registered office" or "Administrative office" to make it clear it is not a "walk in" shop.

It would not surprise me that, should the site be classified as transactional, Google looks into whether contact info exists.

You may test this however - just add contact info (not just email, but also the office address and phone number) to one of sites and see if rankings improve.

If you decide to do so, do come back and report your findings.

[lucy24]

Just remember that all that trust and goodwill and happy thoughts will fly right out the window if you get e-mail from customers ... and never answer it.* If your schedule is unpredictable and business goes by fits and starts, plug in an auto-responder. "We like you! We love your money! We will answer your email as soon as we possibly can! ... Just not right this instant."


* Necessary corollary: Send yourself an e-mail using the contact form-- and then make sure it shows up exactly when and where you expect.

[diberry]

Loads of websites aren't selling a thing. In that case, I think an email or contact form for email is sufficient, as long as you're actually responsive. Google doesn't even offer that much on their informational pages, right?

And neither does Amazon, so when you say you wouldn't buy from a site that doesn't list its address and all that, realize Amazon is like that. They have forms for emailing them and/or getting them to call you, but if you want to mail them something at their physical address you'll have to go to another website to get that address.

[austtr]

I should have been more accurate in the OP.

Agree with all comments about providing full contact details if you have a business (online only or B&M) where YOU actually provide products or services to paying customers.

But there are many online businesses (eg.. affiliate sites) that link a buyer to a merchant who then provides the product or service. It could be argued that there is no need for anything more than an email address somewhere on the affiliate site.

But the OP was really about whether a site is going to get a smack for having no contact details at all.

[netmeg]

Directly? Probably not.

Indirectly? Could well be.

[JD_Toims]

Interesting question. There was a thread here not too long ago [within the last 3 months IIRC] about someone removing their TOS or some type of "web standard user policy" page and their traffic from Google dropping shortly after -- I can't locate the thread right now, but I remember thinking it was an interesting correlation, even if not the cause of the drop.