Best way for 1st contact?

[Dexie]

Racking my brains for a solution on this and wonder if any of you can lend a hand.

When visitors are on your site, do you find a certain way to be the best to encourage them to make the enquiry please?

Mailto links - they don't always work, because the visitor may be in an internet cafe, or they may not have their email client set to default etc, etc.

Forms - can look intimidating to some people - some people just don't like forms!

What have you found that works for you please?

Any help much appreciated.

Dexie.

[Dexie]

Have I posted this in the right place? If not, I apologise and if you could let me know if there's a better place for this, please let me know. Thanks.

[john_k]

Unless you have a lot of different departments or contact points, then a simple "Contact Us" page, with multiple options works well:

Please contact us through any of the following means:

Mailing Address
street address
city, state zip
(USA)

Phone Numbers
Local: (###) ###-####
Toll Free: (866) ###-####


Email
[e-mail]

Please Contact Me
<form with fields for visitor's name, email, company, phone, and message>

[Dexie]

Many thanks John.

Do you have some sort of comment beside the mailto link, to say something like, if you have problems emailng, just use the form?

Dexie.

[zulu_dude]

Yup, I also think you should offer the mailto link in addition to a form.

Personally, when I'm browsing from my own PC, I prefer to use the mailto link and get really annoyed when a site only offers a form. I like the control of being able to see my email fly out of the outbox.

However, as you rightly say, if I'm browsing from an internet cafe or a friend's PC, the form is definitely the easier contact method to use. I normally have the webmail version of my email open anyway, but sometimes it's too much of a mission to copy and paste the mailto link, remove all the nonsense from the address and then type out the email. In that case, forms are easier.

[Dexie]

Many thanks for that. It all helps.

Any thoughts from anyone else also appreciated.

[surfin2u]

I use an extremely simple form and that's all. I don't want to give out my email address because of spamming, so mailto is out.

My form consists of a single textarea that's about 4 rows by 60 columns, followed below by a Send button. I have instructions above the form that say to include your email address or phone number if you want a reply.

I have this form at the bottom of almost every page on my site, so that no extra navigation is required to contact me. When you click on the Send button you remain on the same page, so that you can continue what you were doing. You do get a friendly "message sent" indication in place of the form after you click on Send.

I can't prove it, but I strongly believe that this solution gets many people to contact me, who might not with another method.

[Dexie]

Many thanks. It sounds as though it works good for you.