| SEO utility for software developers |
Establishing Credibility Using About and Contact Web PagesOne of the issues all web sellers face is establishing credibility with your first-time website visitors. How can you get those prospective customers to trust you enough to buy from you? An easy way is to use your About and/or Contact pages on your website. By adding just a few lines to those pages, you can build instant credibility. How? List your contact information, and you tell your customers that you are real, that you are serious about your business, and that you are not trying to hide. How important is that? Well, first, how important is it to you? Let's say you want to buy a piece of software to do some task, and you've narrowed it down to two products. You look around the first product's website, and on their "Contact" page, they list the company name, a street address, a phone number, an email address, and provide a webform, too. On the second website, they list only an email address - nothing else. Which one do you trust more? Different people may view this in different ways, but most view knowing at least the physical location of the company as a plus. Tucows even gives you rating points for it! Greg Weir of Tucows said, "Feedback from our end users indicates that many people prefer to have more than just an email address for contact, indeed our rating criteria is geared to reflect this and is more favourable to products that offer multiple contact options." Most other people I know agree. David Hyde said, "If I had never heard of the company before, I'd want a physical address and would not buy if I didn't find one." Dave Trump said listing only an email address "makes me a little suspicious. Less likely to buy." Gregg Seelhoff said, "I expect to find a full address on any contact page, and if it is not there, I start to wonder why." But Vadim Motorine said seeing only an email address does not affect his buying decision. Brandon Staggs said it doesn't matter if the money involved is "trivial". But wait, you say, I live in some non-U.S. country. Should I list my address? Do I want to tell people where I am? Let me tell you a little story. When I decided to buy some email software, I was very interested in "The Bat!". Since email software is pretty important, I wanted to check out the company who made it. I looked at their "About Us" page, and saw that they listed an address and phone number in Moldova. I have no clue where Moldova is, but at least they weren't hiding. They were a real company. I bought the software. Other opinions on this may vary. Ed Pulliam said, "Non US or Canada addresses MIGHT affect me a little. That said, I have purchased software from all over the world, and seldom had a problem." Keith Bingham said, "For myself, it doesn't matter for addresses in the US, UK and Europe. As for my customers, I would think a US address is important as 90% of my b2b sales are in the US." Tony Bryer said, "It depends what I'm buying: for something that would be material to my business I would definitely want some evidence of an established business, though I'm not fussed about the country." So listing an address on your website is generally considered a very good thing, and does affect sales. But what about listing your phone number, and even a fax number, if you have it? What do you think when you see a contact page that lists a phone number along with their address? It reassures me. It tells me that they are not afraid to have customers contact them. Bob Langer says, "A phone number is a sign of a serious, mature company." Mitchell Vincent said that when he sees a phone number on a website, "I know that the person or company has confidence in their product." One objection I've heard to listing a phone number is worry over getting calls at all times of the day or night. You can get around that by listing your business hours and your time zone. I do that, and although I don't get very many calls from website visitors, they are all at decent times of day. You could also use a script on your website that shows your time on the page, so they know what time it is where you are. The most important thing about listing a phone number is the possible increase in sales. Most of the calls I get do lead to sales. Others have had the same experience. Ed Guy said, "I have my number listed, but I've added a current Vancouver time and a 'moon-and-stars' night time graphic which has stopped the 2:00 a.m. phone calls." He said he gets three or four calls a week, and they do result in sales. Keith Bingham said, "I have a sales number listed which goes straight to a MaxEmail voicemail account. I receive a few calls a week, and often they result in a sale." Mitchell Vincent said, "I list my phone number all over my websites and have had people call it just to see if it was real. I have closed many, many sales over the phone. I think it does affect people's buying decision." Keep in mind that not everyone who sees your phone number will call you, but seeing your phone number adds to your credibility, and that means more sales. Prospective customers can get an increased feeling of confidence in your company, and your software, just by seeing the phone number. There are, however, some situations where listing a phone number may not be a good idea. Arnor Baldvinsson sells developers' tools, and is active on developers' newsgroups. He has a reputation for providing help to people on most programming-related subjects -- so he makes a point NOT to list his phone number on his website. He knows he would get people calling to ask programming questions not related to his products - he gets a few of those phone calls anyway, from people who manage to find his phone number from other places. Rosemary West used to sell fortune-telling software. She found that many of the people who were attracted to her software would call to talk about their personal problems and other subjects having nothing to do with software support. She removed her telephone number from her website. Others have concerns about listing a phone number because their spoken English skills may be poor. That is a valid concern, but there are two ways to look at it. You may worry about losing sales if someone calls and there are language problems. This may happen, I don't know. However, if I'm calling Moldova, I don't expect the person on the other end of the line to be fluent in English - and I probably won't call, because of that, and the long-distance charges. But seeing a phone number affects me (and my sales decision) positively. You might try listing your telephone number to see what happens. You can always remove it if it becomes a problem. The worst thing you can do is use have only a webform for customer contact. That tells the prospect that you are so deep in hiding that you won't even give out an email address. Now, I know there are issues with posting your email address openly on the web (like bots harvesting the address for spam), but there are ways around that. The easiest way is to put your email address in a graphic, which is what I do on the AISIP About page. Others handle it other ways, just ask about it in the AISIP newsgroups and you'll get some good ideas. Providing webform-only contact is a bad choice for other reasons, too. Most of us like to track our correspondence with a company, and have a record of what we tell them, and when. A webform generally doesn't provide that. And Dennis Reinhardt of SpamAI points out, "I hear a lot of complaints here about email being unreliable. Well, if I write you via web form, other than pawing through my trash for the next 48 hours, how do I know what to filter for in the reply? I have no idea what domain or email address will be used for a response." The fact is, the more information you provide that says your company is real, that you are not hiding, that you are not a faceless fly-by-night internet huckster, the more credibility you build with your prospective customers. Ron Burk summed it up, "Author is unwilling to provide verifiable contact info? No thanks -- surely someone selling something whose main goal is to infect my machine would provide no verifiable contact info. Why do legitimate people want to project the same image as scum?" Why, indeed? If you enjoyed this article, please show your support by joining AISIP. A membership costs only $15 or $24, and gives you access to members-only forums, book club discussions, discounts, and more. Web Accessibility GuideThe Web Accessibility Guide is a comprehensive introduction to accessibility. It`s ideal for anyone looking to further their knowledge about what web accessibility actually is and what your legal requirements are under the Disability Discrimination Act. Just enter your e-mail address and we`ll e-mail you the download details for the free PDF report - it couldn`t be simpler! Get your copy today - it`s free! Please contact us if you`d like to republish the Web Accessibility Guide on your website. Adobe Reader Get Acrobat Reader (If you`re using a screen reader consult consult Adobe accessibility for advice on accessing PDFs)More white papers
SEO articles index
|
||