Designing Your Contact Page

I found this of the BBC Wales website. This is an excellent example of how a simply designed Contact Page that give you lots of food for thought and ease of use. Take a look:

BBC Wales specialist correspondents
To contact via
E-mail all can be found at BBC.CO.UK- add this onto the end of their
name.
Correspondents coordinator
Steve Duffy - 02920 322099 Email:
steve.duffy@ Fax: 02920555960
Arts and media correspondent
Jon Gower -
02920 322306 Email: jon.gower@
Education correspondent
Louise Elliott/Julie Barton - 02920 323283 Email: louise.elliott@

This was found at a newsgathering site and I think it is pretty well-done simply because the editors name and emails and phone numbers were listed. The reason readers are asked to insert bbc.co.uk after the @ after their names is to reduce spam, which is wise.

Another good contact page belongs to one of the top papers in the UK - The Guardian. Here is how it looks like:



Things to consider when designing your Contact Page:

a) What is the make-up of your readers/clientele - do they use emails a lot or phone and faxes are preferred. You may put all three in, or limit to just phone calls, if emails are a problem with your end of the line.

b) If setting up emails and spam is your concern, then have Captcha Code activated forms to keep spammers at bay. If this is not possible, perhaps do what the BBC contact list did. Either give just partial address, ie. "name@" and instruct your readers/clientele to insert the "com[any.com", or add a no-spam line before each name and instruct your email writer to delete it before sending. Such as: no_spam(removethis)_name@mediahouse.com

c) Keep hyperlinks out of emails to stop spams at the gate. Mail harvesters love these hyperlinks.

d) Only give desk info if your editor is particularly susceptible to voilent calls. For instance, your crime editor may be put at risk if his name and contact is out, so you might like to just name the contact as Crime Desk, with appropriate fax, phone or email.

e) Many media houses think they are so well known that they do not need a map. I think otherwise. Giving a map of your headquarters and branch offices, including advertisement placement offices is good public relations.