My Contact Page Is a Doormat — Please Wipe Your Feet
Photo: worn welcome doormat outside front door of British terraced house, via coolmaterial.com
Last month I spent a genuinely daft amount of time on someone's contact page. Three fields, a dropdown asking me to categorise my enquiry, a captcha involving six rounds of traffic lights, and a "message sent" screen that vanished before I could screenshot it. I still don't know whether it arrived. Two weeks later, it hadn't been answered. I won't name them, mainly because I could be describing half the personal sites in the UK.
Meanwhile the contact bit of ChrisJM is a couple of paragraphs and a plain, old-fashioned email address. That's not pure laziness — only partly. It's a decision.
The Form Is a Bouncer With a Clipboard
A contact form on a one-person site does a job that doesn't need doing. It filters, it gates, it makes you prove you're a real human before you're allowed to say hello. Fine for an organisation getting thousands of messages a day. Completely daft for someone who gets maybe six a week, two of which are from the same very nice man in Leeds asking about a post from 2024.
Worse, forms hide things. You can't read them later. There's no copy sitting in your sent folder, so when a submission fails silently — and they do, more often than anyone admits — the conversation is dead and neither of us ever finds out.
What a Doormat Is Actually For
A doormat isn't a barrier. It's a greeting with a bit of grit in it. It says: come in, mind your boots, here's where everything is. That's exactly the job a contact page should do. It should tell you who you're writing to, what sort of thing lands well, roughly how quickly you'll hear back, and where to write. Four lines. Ten minutes to draft.
Mine goes something like: I'm Chris, I read everything, I'm rubbish at replies in December, and yes I'll meet you for a brew if you're anywhere near the Peak District. Then the address, in full, as text you can select.
Say What You'd Like to Hear
The single best thing I added to that page this year was a short list of what people actually send me. Corrections to a post. Questions about how a particular bit of the site is built. A record or a link someone thinks I'd like. The occasional "your RSS feed is broken" — it was, and thank you, Paul.
And then the genuinely useful bit: what I'm not the right person for. I can't review your thing. I'm not running a guest posting scheme. I don't want to buy a backlink, an SEO audit or a course on passive income, and those emails get binned unread.
Writing that list felt rude at the time. It wasn't. It cut out about half the junk overnight and made the good messages easier to spot in a crowded inbox. Clarity isn't unfriendliness; it's respect for the other person's time, which is about the warmest thing a Brit can say to a stranger.
Reply Times Are a Kindness
Here's what nobody likes to admit: a contact form promises nothing. No timeline, no reassurance, no clue whether the person checks their inbox daily or once an ice age. That ambiguity is why people chase you after twelve hours, or give up and never write at all.
So I state it plainly: usually a few days, sometimes longer, always read. It isn't a service level agreement, it's just honesty. Anyone with a deadline knows instantly whether I'm worth waiting for, and I'd rather they ask someone faster than sit there hoping.
Put the Address Where I Can See It
I've grown suspicious of any personal site where finding the email is a puzzle. If your contact page is a form and nothing else, you've told me something about yourself, and it isn't flattering. Give me a plain mailto link and I know you exist.
People worry about scraping. Fair enough — I get enough junk to assemble a small kitchen appliance out of spam. But a visible address with a filter behind it has cost me maybe ten unwanted emails a month and bought me every collaboration this site has ever had. That's a lopsided trade I'd take every single time.
A Small Boundary, Not a Wall
None of this is an argument for publishing your full name, your street and a description of your wheelie bin. Boundaries matter, particularly for anyone with a public profile. Mine are straightforward: no phone number, no fixed address, and if your message is three paragraphs of sales pitch I'm allowed to bin it without a shred of guilt.
A doormat says you're welcome in, and here's where to step. It also, blessedly, retracts — just in case you decide not to open the door at all.
The Five-Second Test
If you want to check your own contact page, try this. Hand your phone to a friend and ask one question: "How would you email this person?" If they hesitate, or scroll, or fill in a form that makes them pick a category before they can say hello, you've got your answer.
A personal site's contact page is where the personality either turns up or goes missing. Mine's a doormat with my name on it: a bit worn, plenty of grit, but the door is open. If you're passing through the Peaks, the kettle is a few feet away.
