How many times have you made an online search only to leave that website less than a minute later, feeling frustrated and already onto another site and so on.
Yes, me too, along with plenty of others. We live in an impatient world where we expect things to happen NOW.
That means that when a visitor comes to your site and wants an item of basic information such as an address, a phone number, a way of contacting you perhaps, they will expect to have that information within seconds.
If they don’t, they are gone, perhaps forever. This is a lost customer or a lost opportunity. This is the equivalent of a person visiting your premises only to find a receptionist drunk at the reception desk, unable to deal with your enquiry adequately or to point you towards anyone else who can help.
You would walk out wouldn’t you, and try to find someone else that offers the same service.
The same thing happens online, but quicker.
That is why these days, many designers have moved away from the multiple page style website, offering instead a single page on which you scroll down to get the information that you need. There are examples of this on the “our work” section here on webdesigninfrance.com
There are generally navigation buttons somewhere at the top of the page, and clicking one of the links scrolls you down to the relevant section, this saves time waiting for a page to load up, which also pleases Google.
So at the top of the page you would have a corporate identity and a strong clear message as to what the website is about, followed by information about the company, product or service, and then perhaps a map indicating the whereabouts of your premises if applicable.
Website forms are essential these days for purposes that are dependent upon your style of business or your strategy. A contact form is actually better than just displaying an email address; a customer can quickly input their name and details without having to pull up their email account, so have both on your site.