Tell me more ×
User Experience Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for user experience researchers and experts. It's 100% free, no registration required.
up vote 5 down vote favorite

So looking at a particular site's analytics, you usually find 'Contact' very high on the list of destination page views.

My question is... Do you think people expect 'contact us' to be the last object on a navigation bar, or is it still subjective?

On first impression, I feel it feels strange to have it anywhere else. I'd be interested to hear people thoughts.

share|improve this question

4 Answers

up vote 6 down vote accepted

A lot depends on what you want to encourage, and on what your business model is.

If you have a Contact Us link in your header (all else being equal), it is more likely that someone will contact you. So if that is key to your business strategy, then put it in your header. Companies for which their customer service / contacts are actually an important sales method usually do this. Zappos is an example of this.

enter image description here

Not all companies put a Contact Us link in the header. Companies that don't really want you to contact them, as it is a business strain, typically do this. Dropbox for example has it in the footer with all of its other links. The advantage of this, is that you keep potential customers more focused on whatever you're trying to focus their attention on, while keeping your customer support costs down.

enter image description here

share|improve this answer
Agreed! Obviously, if you give prominence to it, and users have a reason to use it, you'd better be able to support some sort of volume. If business requirements or models don't demand, and if users are well served by the content of the site, then you can easily put Contact Us in header navigation or even footer. – aomedia Feb 7 at 1:52
Thanks for the reply. Possibly the main business goal is to get users to contact, this is why the question came up. It was less a 'should it be there or not' and more of a 'this is so important, should it be the last item in the nav'. I should have made this clearer. I guess the real question is 'Which is more important, prominence of content, or common web/user practices?' My initial findings lean towards keeping contact in the top right of the navigation but also including a prominent CTA to the sites content areas. This only feels unbalanced and duplicated if the navigation is heavy. – Hornerlas Feb 7 at 5:01
up vote 3 down vote

I think most users expect the "Contact Us" page to be at the end of the navigation. Not only that but it's aligned with the way users view websites. When they visit your site they're not going to want to contact you first because they know nothing about you. So putting it at the beginning doesn't make sense. They'll want to contact you after they know more about you, so putting at the end matches their flow of navigating.

Here's an article that goes into more detail: http://uxmovement.com/navigation/why-the-contact-us-page-always-goes-last/

share|improve this answer
up vote 2 down vote

Interesting question. From my opinion, I feel that "contact" being located towards the end of a navigation is a very common practice and most people would expect it to be there.

However this depends on what you want to promote on your website. If customer support is a BIG part of your company's marketing, then it should be shown prominently.

Normally, viewing the contact information is towards the end of a user's workflow. Which is usually why most websites have their contact information towards the end of the navigation.

share|improve this answer
Thanks for the reply Chris. I agree with your comments. Without repeating myself too much from the other comments, I think staying with good practises is the key and adding content level CTAs will help with user flows through-out the experience. I more wanted to see if my thoughts were shared, and it appears they are. Thanks again. – Hornerlas Feb 7 at 5:10
up vote 1 down vote

I agree that "contact" at the end of a navigation is pretty common. The other common place allot of times is in the footer. I also find that allot of people put their contact info in the "About us" section as well. Repetition is not necessarily a bad thing. The key is if you want people to contact you then you'd better make it very easy to find. Then, of course, follow through and respond when they contact you.

share|improve this answer
Thanks for the reply. This seems to be the solution I will move forward with. Contact is too important for the business goals to hide, but I think keeping it in the common position and adding contact CTAs will help to control the user flow to contact at different points in the content. – Hornerlas Feb 7 at 5:08

Your Answer

 
discard

By posting your answer, you agree to the privacy policy and terms of service.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.