This is the sixth post in a series of articles which expands on Six things you absolutely have to have on your website.
The Six Pack Series
Here’s the problem with your website. You don’t get contacted. Well, there can be a number of reasons that no one will contact a website, but one of the major reasons is a lack of information on how to contact you.
It is imperative that you have information on how to engage with you and your business on your website. It is the primary way of communication with your visitors. Further, ways of engaging with your audience come in multiple forms.
What should I include? Here are four points of engagement with your website audience.
Contact Information
The fist way is quite ordinary. If you are a business, one with a physical location, at the least, you should put all of your information on a contact page. In addition, you might want to put it in a sidebar, a footer or on the front page somewhere where it is easily found. In fact, if possible, you might utilize several of these locations.
Look, there is nothing more frustrating to a website visitor than to not find information on how to contact the business! It’s also frustrating when only one way is listed.
Some people are hesitate, for good reason, to put their email address on their website because of spammers. However, you can include your email in a way that spammers cannot harvest. Put your email address on your website, it is worth it and you can trick the spammers quite easily.
If your business is home-based or you are virtual, I can understand not putting a phone number or address on your website. You can substitute a post office box for a physical address, and, if you have a business number, you can put that on the website.
Otherwise, if you are a business with a physical location and business contact information, it absolutely pertinent to put that on your website! Failure to do so is a failure to be contacted.
Go ahead and also use a contact form. Some people will use the contact form. When you construct your pages to funnel to a “landing page,” it is important to have a contact form to prompt a response. Contact forms are easier to create than ever.
There are several different websites that employ a what-you-see-is-what-you-get type of environment for creating contact forms. One of the most popular is Wufoo Forms. Further, if you are using WordPress for your website, there are several contact form plugins you can use.
Social Media Info
Since you have a profile at Facebook and Twitter, maybe Linkedin or some other social media website, you need to include links to them on your website. Invite your audience to engage with you in that forum. I am a fan of using icons that are linked to your profile.
If you are using WordPress for your website, there are a number of plugins that will help automate the process for you. I am not a big fan of social media widgets such as the ones that are made to display tweets from your twitter account. That is only because the continuous updating can slow down the loading of your website.
Nevertheless, employ your social media presence and promote it on your website!
Email Newsletter
When you have visitors, it is very beneficial to try to encourage them to sign up for an email newsletter. You can have a form on your sidebar or on a landing page giving visitors the opportunity to subscribe.
To comply with Spam laws, it is best to use a program such as Aweber or Mailchimp to host your email list and newsletter. Make sure you have permission from those on your list to send them your email newsletter.
To help your newsletter have some regularity, decide how often to send. It could be once per week, once per month or once per quarter or any other time frame. Decide when you should send it and be on schedule.
Getting people to sign up is one of the great tasks of email newsletter. You can advertise through your social media channels, you can make regular pleas through your blog, or you can create an awesome landing page.
There is also the strategy of offering something free to your visitor in exchange for their email address and being on the list. That could be an ebook, a study, a free guide, or some other cool feature. One more strategy is to ask your clients directly if they would subscribe. Send them the link or ask them to respond to an email saying they would like to subscribe. What better place to start than with your clients?
Comments
One more area we can maximize contact is to include comments on your blog. Most blogging software automatically include this. This has multiple benefits.
Comments will serve as feedback for articles you have written. Make sure you respond to as many comments as possible. Remember, this is engaging your audience. Next, it can show where visitors are coming from. If someone links to your blog, you will see the link in the comments section. Also, when someone decides to comment, they often leave a website URL or an email address. This can give you an idea of who might be visiting and can give you a chance to contact them.
Summary
Whether you are doing business online or offline, one thing remains, communication is a necessary strategy. Having the lines of communication open on your website is a strategy that is worth employing to get visitors to contact you and your business.
What ways are you employing contact information?