How easily can your customers contact you using your website?

Do they have to search through pages of content hoping they will eventually find an email address or contact form? If so, then the information we are about to share is going to dramatically increase your ability to improve your customer satisfaction rates! If you have already taken some of the steps below, that’s great! Instead of having to start from scratch you will be able to pick up where you left off before and make things even better.

 How to make your business easier to contact online

The key to making your business easier to contact is visibility. You can have a dozen ways for people to contact you on your website, but if no one can find them they aren’t doing any good for your customers or your business. Making your contact details ‘obvious’ is also a good idea; for example, graphics and icons are much more obvious than plain text links and are therefore more likely to be clicked on by people who visit your site.

Does your website have:

• A visible phone number and physical address? – One of the first things that separates a serious and legitimate business from a fly-by-night operation is the appearance of a real phone number and physical address on the business’ website. If you prefer placing this information out of the spotlight but still want it to be visible, the footer of your home page is a great location.
• A live chat option? – A live chat feature is going to be appreciated by many customers, but if this is not something that your business has the resources to cover, a small graphic with your phone number in a more prominent place will remind visitors that you are still available if they need to speak with you directly.
• Your location on a map? – Services like Google Maps make it easier than ever to give potential customers an easy way to find your physical location. Even an entirely web-based business has a mailing address!
• Any other ways to engage with your company? – Many businesses are choosing to go the extra mile and place links to their various social media accounts right on their websites. Customer service is now only a click or a phone call away for everyone.

If you are worried that having all of this information on your home page will clutter it up, there is an alternative solution. Instead of having everything scattered all over your home page, leave your address and phone number in the page footer and maybe your social media icons in the sidebar while placing the rest on a separate page just for contact information. It is a good idea to have a “Contact Us” page in your navigation no matter what, but by making it a one-stop location for all of your contact information, your customers will have all of the information they need to get in touch with you!

Why you need to make your business easier to contact ASAP!

Every time someone visits your website and cannot find a way to contact you to ask a question or provide you with their feedback, you have lost the potential to give that person a positive experience. A visitor does not always need to make a purchase from you in order to be a benefit to your business; even a simple positive review to a friend can turn this one person into a walking referral for your business, and they would be doing so for free! With word of mouth advertising being some of the most powerful advertising there is, this is a very important area to focus on.

By making your business easier to contact online you are building the appearance of trustworthiness. You can be the most honest and upstanding person around and bring these qualities to your business, but if this isn’t obvious to the people who visit your site then in their eyes it isn’t true. Making your physical address and phone number visible on your website builds this impression of trustworthiness because it gives customers the opportunity to check up on you and see for themselves that you are a real, legitimate business!

Through a variety of other contact methods you can build on this initial offering of information and make your business appear even more genuine. Surely a business with several different ways to verify their identity is telling the truth!

The customer is always right….always.

The last and perhaps greatest benefit of making your businesses easier to contact online is that is can make your customers feel more satisfied overall. If you have given them a way to contact you by phone, a way to get in touch with you online in real time (i.e. live chat programs like Skype), and a way to get in touch any time of the day or night like an email or contact form, then no matter how they want to get in touch with you, they can. This fosters a sense of satisfaction which leaves them with a positive impression in their mind regardless of whether or not they have made a purchase from your company.

Positive impressions then spread outward through referrals and casual mentions by satisfied customers and visitors to your site, causing an increase in traffic and hopefully increases in positive engagements between representatives and customers too!

How many different options on your website that visitors can use to contact you?

If you liked this post and found it useful, please share it with someone you know!

Did You Know That…

…Your Post’s Headline Is Your First Impression

Most website owners, bloggers, and writers in general don’t realise that the title they give their content is its first line of promotion. A title should grab a reader’s attention and make them want to dig deeper and find out more about your topic.

This is one of the best posts on how to make your blog titles really pop: 15 Tips to Awesome, Eye-Jerking Post Titles – by Nicholas Cardot

A good title is going to get someone’s attention with a sense of urgency that falls just short of pressuring them to open the post. People like the feeling of anticipation they get when opening a page with a catchy title, but hate being pressured into feeling like they have to. So there is a fine line between helping someone to realise that opening something is in their best interest (they’ll learn something, get something for free, etc) and making someone open something because they feel like something negative will happen if they don’t.

…Most Readers Only Skim Content the First Time

So you’ve got to make your first words count!

It’s a fact of life that people are busy and have a lot of demands on their time. Once you’ve grabbed their attention with the title of your content you need to draw them in further with an interesting first paragraph. It needs to be relevant to the rest of your content but can be a little different; for example many posts will open up with a quote, an anecdote or personal story, a joke, or something else that lightens the mood and helps lead into the meat and potatoes of the post body.

And don’t let the fun stop with your introduction, bring it on into the body of your content

You can further draw readers in by catering to their natural desire to scan for the information they need most. Many readers visit blogs for the first time because they appeared in their search results, so they come in ready to find what they need right away. If you can apply formatting elements to your content such as headings and sub-headings, lists, and bold / italic / underlined text you can help your readers find what they need quickly and easily. The goal is to impress them with a positive experience and give them information they need to get on with their day!

… A Good Conclusion Is the Bow That Ties It All Together

A good conclusion brings together all of the ideas you’ve included in your post and draws the reader in one last time with a call to action. Most often a call to action is a question that is posed to the readers, asking them to comment on a blog post or contact the owners of the website for more information or to let them know what the reader thought of their content. A good conclusion can also include one last thing to benefit the reader such as a free resource (ebooks are a popular example) or a list of other places (blogs, websites, etc.) that the reader can visit for even more information on the topic.

There are multiple opportunities in each piece of content to impress your readers and entice them to read more. Think of things that you can offer them; your offerings don’t have to be completely unique, because as the saying goes, “There is nothing new under the sun.” So instead of trying to be the only one saying something, try instead to provide the most useful information you can and give it a new spin by letting your experience and research guide you as you speak in your own voice. Your readers will thank you and remember your content as useful and informative without being too pushy.

…well now you know!

Now you can work towards making your content even more noticeable and build better relationships with your readers.

Help us spread the word by sharing this post with someone you know!

To help you navigate the sea of Social Media, here are some facts that you might find useful, informative, or simply fun.

Worldwide Social Media Tidbits

Facebook
Almost 50% of 18-34 year olds on Facebook check their accounts as soon as they wake up – and  28% them do it before even getting out of bed. This is probably related to the fact that over 250 million people access Facebook via their mobile phone. There are now over 800 million Facebook users worldwide, and all this despite the fact that Facebook is blocked in most parts of China.

More than 2.5 million websites have integrated with Facebook, with Coca-Cola at the top with over 36.5 million likes and  FritoLay set a World Record with 1,575,161 Facebook likes in 24 hours on April 11, 2011. People end up liking a brand on Facebook: 1. because they are a customer (58%), 2. to get access to discounts and promotions (57%) and 56% of consumers say they are more likely to recommend a brand after becoming a fan on Facebook.

Twitter
Twitter has over 225,000,000 users with 100 million of these users logging in at least once a month. There are 50 million  logging in every day sending 190,000,000 tweets per day. 40% of Twitter users don’t tweet, but instead use it to keep up to date and 55% access Twitter via mobile. Nearly 500,000 users are added each day

Facebook Statistics in Australia
There are over 10.7 million Australians (which means 60% of its online population)
actively using Facebook and approximately 100,000 new Facebook accounts being created each month. A little more than half (54%) of Australian Facebook users are female, 46% are male.

The largest age group of Facebook users in Australia is 25-34 year olds, followed by 18-24 year olds. 28% of all Australians on Facebook were between the ages of 35 and 54. Brisbane is the city with the highest percentage of Facebook penetration, followed by Perth, Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide.

Three areas of Melbourne Airport were included in the top 5 most popular places to check-in in Australia for 2011 (including number 1 and 2). The average Australian user spends 26 minutes and 27 seconds on Facebook every time they log in and will spend 6 hours and 46 minutes on Facebook per month.

Sources:
http://www.digitalbuzzblog.com/
http://socialmediatoday.com/node/401475
http://www.mediabistro.com/alltwitter/social-media-statistics_b17188
http://www.clickz.com/clickz/column/2134516/social-media-2011-highlights-included
http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/global/deal-with-it-discounts-drive-brand-love-on-social-media/
http://www.allfacebook.com/facebook-billions-2011-12
http://www.web123.com.au/blog/facebook-australia-2011-stats-revealed.aspx
http://socialtimes.com/google-traffic-up-55-hits-49m-visits-in-december_b87156
http://www.socialmedianews.com.au/social-media-growth-australia-2011-infograph/
http://mashable.com/2012/01/09/tweets-by-country/
http://www.mediabistro.com/alltwitter/twitter-2011-records_b17430
http://socialtimes.com/survey-49-of-linkedin-users-have-household-income-over-100k_b87449
http://www.mediabistro.com/alltwitter/twitter-facebook-customer-support_b17505

Should you change your website to reflect the different seasons?

Opinions are mixed on this subject, with the principle difference being the amount and nature of the changes you might make. Many people argue against this idea because they think doing so is extravagant and can cause usability problems for visitors to the website while it is being altered. Others feel that adding seasonal colours, images, or decorations to a website makes things seem too inconsistent. And then there are those people who are in favour of seasonal changes, feeling that they represent the care and attention a business can put into their site and communicating their awareness of the changing season to their customers.

As with many things in the design world, there is a possible compromise, allowing both camps to have their opinions recognised while still delivering the appropriate content to the end users, the visitors to the website!

How you can make smart changes with seasonal flair

Colours

One way that you can add seasonal colour to your website is by taking a look at your website and seek out places where you can add a bit of seasonal colour. If you have a template-based website or blog design, you might be able to change the colour of some of the elements of the page to reflect the current season. This is likely one of the most cost-effective options for giving your website a bit of seasonal colour as it will not take your web designer or developer very long at all to make these changes for you.

Graphics

Photos, digital graphics, and other elements can be used to give your website a seasonal feel without making any major changes. One of the most popular things to do is have a small graphic element overlayed somewhere on a website; the most common locations are the header and the footer. You can also have a graphic designer create a few banners for your header area, allowing you to change them out every so often to match the current season.

Backgrounds

The background of your website is an area that is often overlooked when site owners are searching for things they can do to give their website some seasonal colour. The background of a website is extremely versatile, and able to support plain colours, textures, photos, and even multiple layers (ask a web developer for more details on that one!) so changing it to reflect the seasons can be a small change that really makes a difference!

Small changes vs. large changes

One of the main reasons many people advocate against changing your website to reflect the current season is that these changes can be costly and drastic if done on a large scale. By large scale we mean a complete redesign of the site. This is not recommended because it can cause confusion for customers, something that is never good, especially during peak retail sales periods! Large-scale changes can also be expensive, something very few companies can afford to indulge in too often.

Instead of going big, it is just as effective -if not more so- to go small and make changes that really have an impact! Changes such as those we mentioned earlier in this post are just a few of the small things you can do to spice up your website, add some visual interest, and bring an infusion of seasonal colour and style to your web page without spending a fortune or changing any of the major structural elements of your website’s design.

In conclusion, if you are going to bring some seasonal flair to your website, make sure that you are employing a qualified design professional; graphic designers, web designers, and web developers are all professionals who will take very good care of your website and work with you to make your website exactly what you would like it to be, regardless of the season!

Have you ever redesigned your website for a seasonal event, or just for the duration of a season, i.e. summer?

If so, did you go small and subtle or did you spring for a total redesign?

Why should you keep up with social media?

Social media is everywhere these days, and there isn’t much a company can do that doesn’t involve social media in some way. Keeping up with social media is important because it can help your business stay in touch with your customers, your target market, and the latest trends in your industry with just a few clicks!

Keeping up can seem intimidating at first because there are so many different websites and networks that you could join, and so many interesting people that you could learn from. The key to a company’s involvement with social media is moderation; don’t go all-out from the very beginning, and don’t take on more than you can handle!

6 ways you can keep up with social media

• Start a blog
• Attend and/or host a webinar
• Start a newsletter
• Create social media profiles
• Do a little face-to-face networking
• Support employee training

If you already have some of these things going on, good for you! You’re ahead of the game. If you see something that your company is not doing yet, consider how it could help your business and how you could incorporate it into your social media routine.

Why / How?

Why are these things useful, and how can they help?

These 6 things are useful because they can help you keep your finger on the pulse of your business while at the same time giving you the room to learn and try new things! A blog or newsletter is a great way to send out information to viewers on your schedule. As you control the content, when it is sent, and who can see it, you can potentially share different information with different groups of people, thereby targeting the right audience with the right message to improve their satisfaction and your sales numbers! Webinars and face-to-face networking are ideal for getting a little “face time” in with other people and businesses. Webinars can teach you new things, or you can host a webinar and increase awareness of your brand while sharing something useful with the world. Face-to-face networking is the best way to make new friends and influence people, not only in your industry but in other industries and markets as well! Social media profiles are par for the course, and one of the most common things you can do to keep up with social media; see what people are saying about your business and respond to them, increasing engagement and hopefully turning potential prospects into satisfied customers! Employee training can also give you an edge by teaching your employees how to handle themselves online both on and off the job.

Keeping up with social media can be exciting; the fast-paced world of real-time customer engagement can seem fun at first, but many people quickly succumb to information overload. It is all too easy to jump into as many social media activities as possible without thinking about how that momentum will be maintained over time. Can you see yourself making one post to every blog and social media profile you control every day for the next year? How about just the next month? Or even just the next week? Chances are you’re not sure how you will manage to get all of this done in addition to your regular duties, and you’re not alone.

Instead of taking on as many tasks as you can handle in the short term, select a few of the most important things in your arsenal (i.e. a blog and 2 social media profiles) and work on them for 20 – 30 minutes each day, and then put them aside until tomorrow. If this doesn’t sound like enough time for something like a blog post or newsletter, consider outsourcing to a freelance writer; it won’t take long at all to proof-read the writer’s work before sending it out to your customers or posting it to your blog, so this could be a great solution for the time-starved business owner!

Many small businesses (and bigger businesses too) are following this path and taking small strides toward a consistent social media presence. Some of these businesses have a single person who handles all of their social media tasks, others have freelancers taking care of things, and still more have combinations of the two.

It’s all about what works for you, and what can help your business keep up with today’s wild world of social media.

Make that first impression count!

First impressions are everything. In a  study led by Dr. Gitte Lindgaard at Carleton University in Ontario first impressions were formed in as little as 50 milliseconds! That’s not long at all; even supposing that you had ten full seconds to make an impression on someone visiting your site, what would you want it to be? Chances are you would be hoping for something that inspired the confidence and trust of the visitor because you have brought them to your website to make them aware of your brand and hopefully have them as a satisfied customer very soon.

What can you do to make sure your first impression is a good one?

• Avoid splash / welcome screens
• Make sure your page is quick-loading
• Ensure that all elements have good contrasts (text and backgrounds for example)

Usability is Hot

“Usability” is a concept that covers how easy your site is to use. It is closely paired with accessibility, which is how easy your site is to access esp. for people with alternative means of browsing such as a blind person using a screen reading device. A website that has considered usability from its initial construction is going to have a much easier time of attracting and winning customers than a site that did not put much effort into the following aspect of the site during its construction:

• Colour
• Typography
• Layout
• Navigation

Which leads us into our next area of focus, aesthetics!

It’s all about the aesthetics…

Aesthetics, or something that relates to something beautiful, is one of the most important influences your site will have on a visitor. Aesthetics covers how your site looks, how it functions, and how these things all work in harmony together. Ask yourself these questions:

• Does your website put your products in the spotlight?
• What order are they [your products] in?
• What is their proximity to one another?
• Have you considered size, perspective, etc when photographing your products?
• Where are the product details, prices, etc in relation to the products?

Believe it or not, these questions can yield some very useful answers that you can use to improve the look and feel of your website. A pleasant looking and smoothly functioning website is a joy to work with and surf through; you stand a much better chance of drawing someone in and keeping them on your site long enough to make a sale if you have put some thought into your site’s design and functionality.

…But beauty is more than skin deep

It is important to remember that while many visitors love playing around with JavaScript, HTML, and Flash-based animations and interactive tools, you’ve brought these people to your site in hopes of making a sale, and if they get distracted playing with your site and wander off before they place an order, then you’ve just spent a lot of money on site development just to lose a customer. Instead of going overboard with animation and interactivity, keep things low key; only animate that which makes a positive impact when animated, like a short video about your product. If you are selling fashions in multiple colours / fabrics / etc. then an interactive tool that shows an estimation of what each item will look like in that fabric makes sense. If you are selling toasters then it doesn’t make quite as much sense… just add a few extra still photos in a tasteful slideshow instead.

Don’t neglect your mobile customers!

With more and more people accessing the internet with their smartphones and tablets it would be unwise indeed to ignore mobile customers when designing and updating your website. Make sure that you speak with your web developer about how you can help adapt your website for mobile users, build separate resources for them, or a combination of the two.

By taking care of your mobile visitors you are helping a large percentage of the internet-capable world see your products in their best light and leave your website with positive associations of your brand.

In conclusion

A more attractive site will help draw people in to your website, and a useful website will entice them to stay. Once you’ve convinced someone to remain on your site they have the opportunity to get to know your company and browse your products at their leisure. If they buy something, great! If not, still ensure that they leave with a positive impression; many people who visit a website will share their experience with someone they know, spreading word of your website in one of the most rapid and trusted ways!