Forum Moderators: buckworks
I guess one of the best ways is to put up a phone number but, as I run my site in my spare time, this is impractical.
So far I've plastered my customer service email address everywhere and I've also added customer testimonies. I've added clear information regarding delivery timescales, our privacy policy etc...
I know that large companies put pictures of there warehouse on their site and have a load of blurb about have they've been in business for a million years. I can't exactly put a picture of my spare bedroom on the site ;)
Does anyone else have any suggestions on this subject?
As a consumer shopping on your site, I would need to know the business address, contact info, some hard information before I would part with my money.
Use a friend or family business address to grow the business. Put a phone number up using a service or answering machine. Check frequently and return calls.
Btw. The phone number would need to link back to the address you use on your site.
Stick with it and it will become more than part-time.
I'd put some movement on the page... maybe a "Today's Special" banner. Also, logos add to credibility. I'd put some more logos on, maybe big names in the tool industry. I'd make my visa logos bigger. And I think a phone number is a must, even if it's an answerphone.
Get some press releases out. It'll be nice to claim "We were featured on the BBC"
bb) your mail address looks good but complicated. Could be that people forget to enter the dot between customer and service.
cc) The links you have in the orange line at the bottom of the page should open in a separate window. So you keep the visitor on you site as well. Make these links affiliate links as well (e.g. BuybyPost seems to have an affiliate program) so you are able to monetize this exit traffic as well.
dd) Have you thought about publishing a newsletter or articles on using certain tools?
You all mention having an answerphone - surely this isn't very useful from a customers point-of-view is it? Or is it simply the fact that I've got a phone number displayed that helps?
fabfurs:
My street address is available through the Contact Us link - do you think this needs to be more visible? You can tell by looking at it though, that it is my home address - isn't this going to put people off?
Macro:
Yeah, I'm planning to put the homepage to better use by having feature products/specials.
I like the idea of adding logos - I'll sort this out later :)
onlineleben:
I'd still get the message even if they typed the email address wrong. I've put a mailto on the link anyway, so this should make it easier for people.
I've never really considered it worth doing much with the out-going links at the bottom of the page since I think very few people actually click them. They are there more because of the incoming traffic from the link exchange...
The "Help & Information" section of your site navigation is not very prominent, and when visiting one of its pages, e.g. "About Us", you have to hit the back button to get other information such as shipping.
After adding something to the cart, there's a blank square on the homepage near the "Help" section.
One thing impressed me: when toggling shipping, the page is sufficiently fast that one gets the sense that the application is responsive. Plus, if I implement a similar feature, I won't have to worry about hacks to maintain cart state.
"Unified Messaging" is the industry term I believe.
They'll give you a toll-free number that forwards incoming calls to the number(s) of your choice on your schedule. It's kinda neat, a customer calls up and the system plays a professional corporate greeting and asks them to enter an extension (you can configure as many extensions as you're willing to pay for). When a person dials that extension, they're asked to say their name and placed on hold. The system then calls you and says "There is a call on hold from <their name>" and asks if you want to take it or send it to voice mail. Dial your choice and you're either connected or the person is off in voicemail land. If they leave a message, you get an e-mail with an MP3 of the message attached. The customer won't know whether you couldnt' be reached or whether you sent them to voice mail on purpose. You can also configure it to call multiple numbers at once - like your home and cell phone - and whichever one you answer gets the call. (By the way, this is a service not hardware - you dont need any extra lines or anything).
You do have to pay per minute for calls you receive, but phone rates are pretty cheap now and it's not really a big deal. The illusion that you're a larger company is worth a few pennies a minute, as the customer would think they're dialing in to some fancy PBX office phone system.
You can specify the times you wish to receive calls, and when it's outside of those times it will automatically forward the customer to voice mail.
I don't use this for my business anymore since I have an office and don't ever work out of business hours (in other words, I don't want to be reached when I'm not there.. heh). But I still use the "personal" version to roll calls to my home and cell phone. I just give everyone one number, they call and say their name and then I get to pick whether I want to talk to them or not. Plus if I ever change phone numbers I don't have to worry about giving everyone the new number, I've had my webley number since 1998 and have changed home and cell phone numbers twice since then.
Anyway ... see if you can find anything about Unified Messaging in your area, I'm sure there is someone offering it. Then you can put a phone number up on your site.
You might get a few tips from looking at dabs - [dabs.com...] - they're a big computer products retailer that deal purely by web and email (no phone numbers at all), but their aura is certainly that of a large company. No reason you can't emulate this - a specific contact form for journalists, for example, couldn't do any harm...
[edited by: TallTroll at 11:40 am (utc) on April 7, 2004]
