Lets say you put up a booth at an exhibition where a large
number of people have come to see a product or service that you
offer. This booth has all the brochures, pictures, demos etc. of
your products/service. The customer is now interested and wants
to talk to someone to find out more about your product/service
or to clarify a few queries.
But on this booth you have not displayed your phone nos.
anywhere or any other contact details prominently. The customer
is expected to look around for your contact details all across
the booth. How long do you think this customer will look around?
Do you think he or she would take a lot of effort finding out
how to contact you?
Well this is what I have seen on a number of web sites across
the Internet. All sites are designed well, all product details
are mentioned, and ways to purchase the products are defined.
But the details on how to contact the company are either not
mentioned or put in a link "Contact Us" in the footer of the
site in small fonts.
"Contact us" should be the highlight of the website. Your
telephone numbers, email address etc. all should be displayed
prominently on the top of the site on every page so that people
can easily call you up and get their questions answered. If you
have a toll free number that much better. Display this on the
top of the page.
If you do not have a 24-hour service then display the time
between which people should call you and specially mention the
time zone. The Internet has people coming to your website from
all over the world and the time zones are different as you know.
So you put up on your website 9.00 am - 5.00 pm and no time zone
it would look to the visitor that he or she can call you during
their time zone.
People feel more comfortable making a purchase from a website to
whom they can reach by a phone to clarify any queries that they
may have. Every sales man in his first contact with his customer
first hands out his visiting card to ensure that the customer
can call him after his sales call for any clarifications.
Advertise your phone numbers and contact details on the website
more prominently and ensure that it is mentioned on every page
of your website as any visitor to your site would not
necessarily enter your website from your home page.
