While the Contact page is one of the most visited pages, I had put it off for a time, wanting to redesign the pages that really needed work first. While not the best, the Contact page was functional and was easy enough to skim. After redoing the other pages though, the Contact page started to look ugly in comparison.
The Old Page
The existing Contact page worked, but the use of icons was inconsistent, the page was longer than necessary, and the Ask chat area wasn’t distinct enough (e.g. some thought the hours referred to general library hours instead of just chat hours).
The Mockups
I wasn’t sure how I might redesign the page, so I went and looked at other sites. Rather than library sites, I searched for list of best contact pages and such. I looked through quite a lot, and in particular, the embedded location map was an idea from another site.
The separate accessibility link was taken out, since it’s already in the folder, and instead, added to the list of emails (though that’s not reflected in all the mockups). The suggest a purchase was also taken out, but we have it linked in various places, particularly where users might not be finding the items they want. There is also some discussion about putting it as a shortcut on the main page.
While I didn’t really like all of the mockups, I took all of these to the web committee anyway. The group liked mockup #2a with the icons and the yellow box, but we decided that the yellow box was a bit much, so I changed it (based on a recommendation) to an outline instead of a solid fill.
The New Page
Some minor changes were made based on feedback from staff. I went back and forth on whether to have the location and phone in one heading or as two separate headings, but I decided that since the map was part of the location and not the phone information, it would make more sense to put it all under one heading.
I think the goals of making it shorter and the chat part visually separated were met. Hopefully, information is clearer too. (Someone did notice an email address that had always been there!) I’ve gotten some positive comments already!