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Can Your Visitors Contact You
From Your Website
by: Dave Tan
Argh, where's the contact
button?! Believe it or not, some websites just DON'T WANT any visitors (even
customers) to CONTACT them. There's no email address, no contact form, no
NOTHING!
What if a potential customer
wants to BUY something from your website but have a few questions or doubts that
he/she needs to ask you first? If you have a FAQ page, that's the first place
he/she will definitely seek answers...but what if your FAQ page still can't
provide the answers he/she seeks?
Don't care?! Not your problem?!
Would rather prevent spam than going through all the trouble?!
If your website can't even
provide even HANDLE the SIMPLEST form of communication, you will definitely lose
lots of potential customers (even loyal customers) because simply can't contact
you!
That's why the Contact Us
button or link should be placed in a highly visible or accessible position. This
is common sense. Who would feel SAFE to buy from a someone let alone a website
that don't even provide the most BASIC form of customer support. What if the
product they bought is defective or they're having some trouble accessing it?
If you're HIDING your website's
email address purely because of spammers, especially from those email harvester
software, you do NOT really need to REMOVE your email address from your web
site. You can create and place a simple GIF image with your email address on it
using the same background color as your web page.
Example 1:
To contact us, send us an email
to:
If you don't want to use an
image, you can separate your email address so that it doesn't look like an email
address to email harvester softwares...
Example 2:
To contact us, send us an email
to: sales at ebookok dot com
This approach is NOT
recommended, because some visitors will actually send an email to sales at
ebookok dot com without first changing it to
sales@ebookok.com. Of course you can tell them to remove the at and replace
it with @ and dot with "." before sending it.
Alternatively, you can create a
web form that allows visitors to submit their questions to your email DIRECTLY
from your website. You will need a little PERL programming knowledge for this,
or you can simply hire someone else to write it for you!
If you do use web form as the
ONLY way to contact you, make sure (1000 percent) that the script is WORKING
properly! Make sure you've set the permission for the script, no errors, etc.
Note: When scripting in Perl,
usually a simple MISSING ";" or "{", or "}" or "Permission Not Set" errors are
the main reasons why your script is not functioning the way it should be! Always
make sure your script is as BUG-FREE (not containing any errors) as possible!
When your visitors submitted
their questions to your through your website, it's a good idea to display a
friendly message like: Thanks for submitting a question, I will be in touch with
you shortly!
This is a good practise and it
is highly recommended because your visitors will know that your script works and
their questions was indeed successfully submitted. Some websites don't even
bother to add a simple message like: Your question was submitted.
They will just display a silly
BLANK page or REDIRECT you back to their contact page or homepage...leaving you
to wonder if your message was indeed submitted properly.
Always try to answer all emails
ASAP and personally - within 24 hours. Customer service is IMPORTANT! Let them
know that you care about them and they will be happy to do business with you!
:-)
That's all for this article,
have fun placing those contact link!
Best Regards,
Dave Tan
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