Contacting The Business

You need to make it as easy as possible for people to contact you because the best way to alienate your audience is to provide limited and slow to response contact details such as a postal address. There are several approaches to make your immediate contact details prominent.

• The website incorporates your contact details as part of the graphic design. Every page will show your contact details. Making 0800 or 0845 numbers prominent also goes a long way to prompting people to call. The free phone call might be the only reason your organisation was chosen over others.
• Anywhere you have written content that promotes the viewer to contact you should have a link to the contact us page embedded within the copy e.g. “to find out more information about our widgets then contact us”
• Making email addresses links to open up a new email (There are concerns about email harvesting programs which are covered later, the choice is yours to make between potential spam emails or ease of use for your customers)
• Have an interactive online chat facility on your site. This enables customers to immediately pose a question to a member of your organisation.
• Call me back button. Visitors click this and enter a preferable time to be called back.

Web page readers tend to scan information at least 25% faster than if they were reading a newspaper or magazine so you need to make contact details or action buttons and statements (to purchase click here, to join our newsletter click the button etc) larger and more noticeable that its surroundings. If not then you risk that visitor leaving your website to search elsewhere.

Imagine you walk into a spare parts shop with all the goods shown behind the counter but no one is at the front desk to take your order or answer your questions. How long would you wait for someone to turn up? Unless your need was urgent for those products, seeking another option e.g. another shop would soon become a preferable option to waiting about.

In summary, make it very easy for website visitors to contact you immediately. A point to note is that it is also a requirement that all e-commerce shops clearly state their full trading address anyway.