Re: Contact Info Best practices

From: Cliff Kurtzman <moderator_at_o-a.com>
Date: Mon 22 Aug 2005 09:33:25 -0500

Toby Bloomberg wrote:

>To support Rob and Aimee's suggestions, take a look at the Stanford
>Guidelines for Web Credibility
>http://www.webcredibility.org/guidelines/. These best practices are
>based on extensive research.
>
>Number 5: Make it easy to contact you. A simple way to boost your
>site's credibility is by making your contact information clear: phone
>number, physical address, and email address.

The notion that it is a desired web design characteristic to make
it easy for everyone to contact you is just plain WRONG. You want it
to be easy for the right people (those that you want to and are
able to help, or those that you want to have help you) to contact
you. And you want to make it easy for them to contact you in a
manner that best enables you to support their needs and/or
facilitate a transaction.

There may be other audiences for whom you don't particularly care if
they can easily contact you, and even other audiences that you want
to discourage from trying to contact you.

Suppose someone goes to the ADASTRO web site
and reads my article from a past eMetrics conference in Santa
Barbara about Jared Spool's presentation on what it is important to
measure in E-Commerce (http://www.adastro.com/apogee/revenue.html).
Suppose they found the article because they are planning to attend a
conference in Santa Barbara about the mating habits of North
Atlantic salmon, and they are looking for hotel rooms in Santa
Barbara, and did a search on Google about Santa Barbara conferences
and got a hit on my article. Do I want this person sending me an
email asking me for a recommendation on Santa Barbara hotel rooms
based on my experiences attending the eMetrics Summit? Absolutely
not--I have no substantive expertise on that subject, and even if I
was an expert on it, it is a waste of my time to spend it advising
a random person on what hotel they should stay at. This is most
likely a visitor to my web site for whom my interests are best
served if I never hear from them.

Do I want someone who visits my web site and can use the services I
offer, but cannot afford them, to contact me looking for free
advice? Absolutely NOT. I provide a free newsletter to support this
audience... the idea is that someday they might be in a situation
where they could use my services, or they might someday be able to
refer someone to me as a client, so the newsletter serves as a
vehicle for staying in their mindshare... but that is the extent of
what I can offer them until such time. So I want my web site design
to encourage these individuals to sign up for my newsletter, but
that is all.

Do I want it to be easy for someone who visits my web site looking to
sell me janitorial services I don't need to contact me? Nope.

Do I want to make it easy for someone to contact me that is the CEO
of a profitable $100M company, and is looking to turn their
business into a billion dollar brand? YES -- that is my target
client for the services I offer. For that person, the value I offer
(and the value they offer me) is immense, and I want them to be
able to get in touch with me in a manner that they will be
comfortable with. Do I want to make it easy for someone that wants
to hire me to keynote their conference on online marketing or
branding or corporate value enhancement to get in touch with me?
YES. The challenge from a web design perspective is to make it easy
for these folks to contact me, but not encourage the other folks
to contact me.

--Cliff

Clifford R. Kurtzman
CEO | Moderator
ADASTRO Incorporated | The Online Advertising Discussion List
http://www.adastro.com | http://www.o-a.com





Received on Mon Aug 22 2005 - 09:33:25 CDT