The contact information on your website is one of its most vital elements. If that contact information is not easily accessible, you’re probably losing business. Here are some tips to make certain that you are making your contact information as accessible as possible.

Sidebars
Most websites these days have sidebars that have additional functions built into them. One of the best ideas around it is to put a contact form right in your sidebar. Instead of having to navigate to your “Contact Us” page, which you should have, users can simply e-mail you right from the page they’re on at any given time. You should also have your regular contact information – phone number, etc. – in the sidebar so people can see it at all times. Place it in the footer of the page, as well.

In Content
Usually at the end of content, you’ll see an e-mail address for the person who wrote the article. This is a great way to put contact information right in front of the visitor in a way that is particularly useful to them.

You can also link author attributions to e-mail addresses to make it easy for people to contact the author of a given piece. If you do a lot of blog posting on your website, this is a great way to encourage people to stay in touch.

Remember that most smart phones will automatically recognize a phone number if the user presses on it in their browser. Putting your phone number in a place where it is accessible on any page of your site, including the mobile version of your site, is an excellent way to make certain that people can call you easily.

Separate Page
You should have a standard contact page among the other pages on your site. Even though this isn’t typically the easiest way to get to your contact information, people still understand this instantly and they’ll start looking for a contact page if they realize that they have a question for you.

Make sure all of the various people within your company are organized logically on your contact page. For instance, if you had a section of your page for your human resources personnel, you might want to have the head of the department listed first with all of the other people in the department listed directly underneath them. This is something that seems obvious, but many websites fail in this regard.

On Images
If you have images on your website, consider watermarking them. This means adding contact information directly onto the image. If somebody saves the image and post it on a different website, your contact information will still be included on it, which may be useful. It also prevents people from falsely claiming credit for your work, or at least from doing so without cropping the image heavily.

Logo
Your logo should have your contact information in it. Your website designer can also link your logo to anything you need it linked to, including an e-mail address. However you want to handle this is fine, but make certain that, when people see your logo on your website, they don’t have to look far to see your contact information.

Keeping your contact information visible at all times is a great way to enhance the value you get out of having a website. If you have a great website, it should be advertising for you on every single page and one of the easiest ways to make sure that happens is to be certain that your contact information is always right there.

Matt Dandurand is the CEO of MediaContour.com, offering web design in Los Angeles, CA.