I was recently reminded of a TV advert promoting a travel
company. In the ad a character was wandering about a
wilderness calling out "Is there anybody there?". The idea
of the ad was that everyone had gone off on cheap holidays
bought from the travel company.
OK, so what's the point!
I was reminded of this while searching the web for joint
venture partners for an extremely lucrative deal I wanted to
offer them. I was more than a little surprised at what I
found; or what I didn't find more like.
I couldn't believe how difficult it was on a lot of websites
to find an email address I could use to contact the
webmaster or someone at the company. Granted, some had one
of those featureless online message forms. I don't know
about you, but I find them very impersonal, somewhat akin to
posting a message in a bottle, tossing it in the sea and
hoping sometime someone will answer.
I much prefer a proper bona fide email address that I can
enter in the "To:" box of my email, and a name of a real
person to converse with. I'm sure I'm not alone. There are
probably hundreds, maybe thousands, of your potential
customers jumping up with a hand in the air at this point,
shouting "Me to! Me to!"
The upshot of this is that some webmasters and companies
somewhere lost out on the opportunity of making a tidy sum
all because of a missing contact email address.
The moral of the story is don't make the same mistake on
your website. Include your full contact details, make it
blindingly obvious where they're located, and above all make
it easy for people to contact you.
Don't worry, you won't have a queue of clients forming
outside your front door, or ringing you up at all hours of
the day and night. What you probably will have, is more
trusting clients, safe in the knowledge that they know
where you live and can 'send the boys round' to knee cap you
if you stiff them. No sorry! Got a little carried away
there.
Including your full contact details on your website, i.e.
name, position, email, telephone and fax numbers, and
mailing address, will help your clients to have a little
more trust in you. By identifying yourself, they can
hopefully see that your not some 'fly by night' who's going
to do a 'moonlit flit' before they get their goods. You're
not are you?
Also, on the even more positive side, next time someone like
me comes along ready to offer you a stonking great joint
venture deal that's going to make us loads and loads of
wonga, they'll be able to find you won't they?
Be successful.
About the Author
Jeff McCall is the librarian at The Success Library, a vast
collection of ebooks, articles and resources to help you
achieve online success.
http://www.thesuccesslibrary.co.uk/ad/whereis/
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