User Experience for a Better World

Contactus design - Information limit?

I would like to know if any design guild lines available for a contact us screen design in terms of limiting the amount of information offered. A typical Contact us screen is mainly driven by information than by a task performance by a User. Here in my requirements I have a mix of information seeking and task performance for a User resulting too much of information. I am afraid of typical user mental model of contact us screen.

To give a context, I am working on a ecommerce customer support, where different information to be provided for a tech support, sales support, report product defect, request for proposal etc for a User.

Guide me if anyone has reference designs or best way to deal with this.

Tags: contactus, design

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Permalink Reply by Marissa Collen on February 25, 2010 at 6:41pm

On e-commerce sites I usually see a drill-down contact page. If it seems like the information could fit on one page (but may not be easily scannable) you might want to try some bookmarks that hyperlink to the specific section of the page. Or you could create secondary contact pages by topic.

Here are a few examples:
http://support.microsoft.com/contactus/?ws=mscom
http://support.dell.com/support/topics/global.aspx/support/dellcare...
http://www.apple.com/contact/

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Permalink Reply by Rajat Bhardwaj on March 2, 2010 at 2:37am

Hey Pushpa,
mental model says when user's think of contact us, they expect a phone no. or an email where they can get in touch with someone on personal basis.
Like you said, the customer support section could have sales support, report product defect, request for proposal etc for the User but putting all this on contact us page might not be a good Idea.

I hope this helps..
please let me know if this answer your query.

Rajat

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Permalink Reply by Parveez on March 3, 2010 at 11:53pm

It's depends on what service industry you are, based on that you will provide the contact details.

But have to mention the contact details like geographic region, place/location, address, email, and contact no.

I agree with Collen's examples that are the best examples for Contact us design