четверг, 19 марта 2015 г.

What Contact Options Should Your Local Website Have


Have you ever thought of how it is easy for the prospects to contact you via your local business website? I strongly believe reaching you out should be easy, especially if you providing services that require urgent reactions on client’s request. Why? Because having no easy-to-use contact option will probably force people to contact your competitors instead. Remember, people are always in a hurry, they are extremely lazy and you shouldn’t make them think how your website works.

In this article you will find valuable information on common mistakes related to contact options on local websites and helpful guidance on how to fix them.

Email vs Contact Us Form 


I have seen lots of websites that have both: contact form with fields to fill out and email to which your visitors can shoot you an email. I would recommend to have only contact us form because of the following reasons:

  • You don’t display your email which sometimes might be important 
  • You force contact us form submission which can be tracked. It is good to know for your marketing team and yourself where conversions come from 

If you still prefer to have your email listed, I would recommend having it featured on an image, not in text version.

Phone Numbers

  • Again, I recommend having it featured on an image
  • Don’t use the same phone number though out all advertising channels. If you have an unique number on the website, you will know for sure where the client came from
  • If you can offer a toll-free number to call or a callback, do it. It’s a good tone. 
Live Chat

Add a live chat – why not? If a person wants to clarify quickly something, but doesn’t feel comfortable taking over the phone, chatting is a good option. Besides we chat all the time via messengers and social media, so you are not asking for any unnatural activities from your visitors. There are some considerations that I’d like to highlight.

- Make sure the chat window doesn’t pop-up, crawls across the screen or makes loud sounds and annoys people. This is a very back welcome

- Make sure the chat has options to fit your website’s design. I believe it is very important.

- If you have several departments, then you should check if your provider offers that option.

- Don’t forget that ‘live’ means there should be an operator online during the business hours. Let them know what your business hours are.



Request Form Submission

On a separate note I want to write about the websites where the only option to contact business (except a phone number) is a complex request form with tones of necessary fields to fill in. I have seen dozens of plumbers’ websites and some of them had that awful form where users had to submit their zip codes, addresses, phone numbers and many other things. ‘Why do they formce me to do all this? I am yet not sure if they are right guys for me!’ – This is what I think. ‘I need guys that don’t ask for what I am not ready to give yet, what if they can’t solve my problem and will waste so much time typing and submitting’ – I am getting a bit frustrated and open a neighbor website in a new window.



Conclusion


Before you implement any contact option on your local website, you need to make sure you visitors will understand how to use it, they will not spend much time to use it and they will have a filling that succeeded to use it correctly. Respect their time and don’t overload them with unnecessary tasks, they are already in need, so don’t make things even more complicated.

Комментариев нет:

Отправить комментарий