If your visitors aren't picking up the phone, the only other way they can contact you from the comfort of their computer chair is electronically.

So many small businesses get this wrong on their websites by putting an "Email us" link on their site.

If you want your website to acquire customers and make money for your business, there are multiple problems with this.

First, in the same way that so many businesses hide their phone numbers somewhere on their site, the email link is usually tucked away somewhere on the bottom of the page or sitting on a "Contact" page hoping someone finds it and clicks on it. Even if the "Email us!" link is front and center on your site, it fails the 5 second test because it looks like just another link. It doesn't grab your visitors' attention and tell them you're a business that can solve their problem.

Plus, email links demand a lot from your visitors and makes them jump through hoops to contact you while giving them plenty of chances to become side tracked along the way. You may be thinking to yourself, come on... it takes two seconds to send an email... is this John guy lazy or what?

But think about what you're actually asking your visitor to do. Here's what's going on inside one of your average potential customer's heads as she is debating whether to click the 'email' link on your site:

1. "This business looks like they might actually be able to solve my problem. But it's too late to call them, and plus I've embarked on a personal year long challenge not to speak..."

2. "Okay, here's an 'Email Us' link. I guess I could send these guys an email... but what information do I need to give them? What if I leave something out? Maybe I'll just do it later..."

Here's where a third of your customers make a note to send you an email later on and then promptly forget about the email, your business, your product, and what they had for breakfast. Never to be heard from again.

3. "I guess I'll send them an email and get a little more info."

4. *clicks link, waits for desktop email application to load*

5. *still waiting...*

6. "Finally. Now, what do I put for the subject? How about 'Hi.' No wait, that's too unprofessional. Wait, it looks like my boss just emailed me and she's upset that I'm only communicating by smoke signal at the office..."

You get the idea. If she finally does send the email, she probably doesn't include half of the information you actually need to qualify her as a customer, so now you have to put in the time to follow up just to see if she's worth the time to follow up with.

There are so many things that suck about expecting your customers to email you that I'm tired of talking about it.

Let's get to the solution...

A big contact form on every page.

Here are a few of the things I love about contact forms:

• Visitors cannot overlook them as just another link
• They have those big, empty text boxes that are just begging you to write something in them
• They let you request the essential information you need from your potential customer
• They have shiny 'Submit' buttons... and who doesn't like to press buttons?
• No outside applications or email websites required
• Formsmake it brain-dead simple for visitors to know what they're supposed to do without requiring a single electron of thought: fill it out.

The best way of encouraging your visitors to contact you online is by placing a giant contact form on every page of your site.

These days you don't have to be a web developer or even know HTML to get a contact form set up on your website. Here are my recommendations...

I've tried out a few different pieces of contact form software and my hands-down favorite is MachForm. It makes it incredibly simple to create big, clean looking contact forms and stores all of the responses in an intuitive interface that is easy to navigate. MachForm also makes it a snap to go in and edit any of your forms. At the time of this writing it costs $39.

You can see a MachForm form in action on a website I created for one of my PPC management clients at http://www.WindowsOfHopeCounseling.org. Check it out, you can't miss it.

If you're using Wordpress, there are a variety of free plugins that let you put a contact form on your site. The one I've used the most in the past is cformsII.

It doesn't matter how you do it, just get a big form on your site. No matter what else happens with your website, you'll know that you have made it as easy as possible for your potential customers to become current customers.

Bonus: Once you have your form set up, here's how you can turn the act of filling it out into a "conversion" goal for Adwords conversion tracking (How to Use Google Conversion Tracking in Wordpress) or Google Analytics (How to Track Form Submissions With Google Analytics Goals).

Do you have experience with any other great contact form software or Wordpress plugins? Leave 'em in the comments!