All about Web design.

Can Your Visitors Contact You From Your Website

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!

About The Author

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