Contact Information is Golden
By Robert Campbell on Wednesday, June 18th, 2008
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Now here is an issue that absolutely amazes me. No contact information. Site after site I look at, the typical contact information is typically a email form at best.
If you are not selling something, then really it’s not a big deal. Personal blog? I don’t think you really need business hours, or phone number listed. If you are trying to sell something though, you better have the works. Clearly displaying your contact information is key for improving your sites trust factor.
Taking a look at this Individual Health Insurance site I was not first impressed by site design. It was a little narrow for me, and if you keep up with my posts, I do not like to use justify as a method to format my main content. What it lacked in design qualities though, was made up with an extremely clear method to contact them. Right in the header, and in red, was two different phone numbers to contact them. Below that, near the footer, was a complete list of contact information, and it was found on nearly every page. You should have no problem contacting someone at this company. Trust and design factor, now higher. I’m not about to do business with a company or website that hides their contact information.
They included address, phone numbers, fax numbers, and email. Another key item they included, the name of the company as the mail to part of the address. Forgetting to put the mail to line, line one of an address, is amazingly skipped often. Other methods to compliment this is to include business hours, and additional department numbers if necessary. The more information the higher the trust factor.
If you consider this type of site, a health insurance site, you should also consider the audience. Possibly older, not as computer savvy visitors? I am betting most of their visitors are in an age bracket that prefer to use the telephone. I’m also betting that having their phone number clearly displayed in the header was a planned idea, instead of just a slapped on “here is our phone number line”. They know their visitors like to use the phone, and they are making it more than available.
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