OK, bear with me here as I go on a bit of a rant. I promise I’m making a very pertinent point:
When sitting with a potential client recently we did a little bit of competition analysis and quickly realised that many businesses online see to want to make it very difficult for website visitors to get in touch.
We were both amazed that so many websites out there seem to want to make visitors go to a Contact page to find a phone number or email address. This, is absolutely bonkers really and very similar to putting the phone number on your business card in really small type in a corner on the back. Contacting you should be easy, and here’s why:
The aim of all websites should be to get some kind of response. This could be in the form of picking up the phone, sending an emailing, completing a contact form, buying something, downloading something and so on.
Contacting you should be easy – taken from the top right corner of a client website, this is on every page on the website
So why, oh why, do so many websites hide contact details on a Contact page? Or, worse still, give no clear direction as to what action the website visitor should take to get in touch.
But this isn’t just about your website, it’s about all of your business communication. Everything you send out with your company name on it should have a clear indication of how the reader/viewer/listener can get in touch if needed.
So, have a quick think right now: are your contact details easy to find on your website, your business cards, your brochures, your email footers, your company vehicles, your company stationery, your company uniforms and whatever else you put your company name on?
If the answer is no to any of the this then you need to rethink what you’re aiming at and ask yourself if you could be missing a trick or two here.
As an example: how many times have you seen an ad on the back of the bus with clever graphics but the phone number or web address are really small or (sometimes) not even there? I promise you’ll go and look now.
You see, in the small business world we don’t have the time or the money to go for branding exercises. So you need to aim for response, getting your potential customers making enquiries or buying etc. If your contact details are missing or hard to find then the likelihood of you getting a response diminishes considerably.
However, the solution to this is really simple: make sure that your contact details can be quickly, easily and obviously found on every page of your website and all other forms of communication that your company sends out! Contacting you should be easy!
Hope that helps,
Karl
If you’d like some help with this then give us a call on 0116 3552194 or let us know about your thoughts on this in the comments below: