Design & Publishing . / . WEB . / . Tips & Tricks Index . / . 9803 Clifford: Part 1 . / . 9803 Clifford: Part 2
Douglas Clifford - Part 2: Ways to Shoot Your Web Site in the Foot
Rule #2
Make it easy for potential customers to communicate with you.Don’t make visitors hunt for your email address! When visiting some "web storefronts" I’ve had to load page after page in search of how to contact them. This can get pretty exasperating after the third or fourth try.
Always put your email address on the home page or provide a link to a document called contact.html from your home page. When you add your postal mailing address, telephone and fax numbers, and hours of business your credibility score climbs with consumers. Toll free numbers for taking sales orders, while not cheap, pay for themselves in increased business because consumers are willing to give their credit card number over the phone when they make the call.
Include your email address and web URL in all your printed communications, on your stationery and envelopes, in catalogs and brochures, on billing statements and more.
Admittedly, there’s just one drawback to providing an email address on your web site. It virtually guarantees you’ll receive unsolicited spam email. Live with it and delete it. And don’t even think about requesting "removal" from the spammer’s mailing list. Doing so will validate your email address and ensure a steady flow of future junk.
Rule #3
Customer response is what makes a company a winner.This means you should answer email quickly before the customer looks elsewhere, and even when you’re unable to meet the customer’s needs.
Many companies are trashing their chances for making a sale with their ho-hum "couldn’t-care-less" approach to answering the email they receive. A blind test performed last year by a national polling firm found many businesses took 14 days or longer to respond to email requests for information. Unless you’re the only company in the world offering your product, by then you’ve lost the sale.
This is worth repeating: I will not put off until tomorrow what I can answer today.
Doug's Rules: Rule #1 _|_ Rule #2 _|_ Rule #3 _|_ * Rule #4 _|_ Rule #5 _|_ Rules #6, #7 and end
Doug
Douglas Clifford is the webmaster of the ACE Indexes, an annotated directory of photo commerce web sites, and online photography and digital imaging magazines. (http://www.acecam.com)
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