Re: Contact info best practices

From: Josh Freedman <joshfreedman_at_yahoo.com>
Date: Fri 19 Aug 2005 07:54:57 -0500

> Putting an email addresses on a web site has unfortunately
> become an invitation to be drowned in spam, both from
> automated bots that will harvest the address if is included
> in the HTML code, to zealous marketers that will manually
> add it to their distribution lists if you include it as a
> graphic. My sense is that the contact form will not
> likely put off someone that really has a genuine potential
> interest in doing business with you, but it will keep away
> at least some of the people trying to sell you stuff or
> waste your time.

I offer both the form and email address, but I encode
the email so that automatic email collection programs
can't find it. I created a tool for this purpose:

http://www.web1marketing.com/resources/tools/email-encoder.htm

I have not had problems with real people reading it
and adding me to their list, but then I'm getting an
overwhelming amount of traffic either. If you've got
a lot of traffic, just accept the fact that a small
percentage of calls will be salespeople just as you
get phone solicitations if you're in the yellow pages.

Josh Freedman
www.web1marketing.com




Received on Fri Aug 19 2005 - 07:54:57 CDT