When Rachel Bridge (The Sunday Times Enterprise Editor) tweeted last year the following regarding her new website – www.entrepreneurthings.com, I had a quick look to see what it was all about.
Very excited to get first US order for my entrepreneur mugs today at www.entrepreneurthings.com . We can send them anywhere in the world.
— Rachel Bridge (@rachelbridge100) December 14, 2011
I was rather surprised to find no contact number, which in my opinion is rather crucial for any online website regardless of size.
I am of course biased in this matter but when the question was posed to the general twitter public, it soon became apparent the vast majority where in agreement with me.
@rachelbridge100 for your website to be legal you need a contact number and a snail mail address on it — Philippa Bowen (@philippabowen) December 15, 2011
@rachelbridge100 not necessary but if you’d have one you’d have a virtual pa / answer phone system
— jameseder (@jameseder) December 15, 2011
@rachelbridge100 I agree, I always feel more confident purchasing from a website with a telephone number and not just an email. — SophieJSpooner (@SophieSpooner) December 14, 2011
Of course the tweet that caught my eye the most was if you have a number on your site, make sure someone is going to answer.
Almost as bad as no number at all is one that forever rings out or simply goes to a voicemail.
This is of course where JAM can be of use whether it is taking an actual order over the phone, answering queries, or simply taking a message via our PAYG Answer.co.uk service.
Ironically when Answer.co.uk was launched in 2008 we didn’t initially advertise a number on the site, and instead wanted to focus visitors to do everything online.
This proved a mistake as the moment we did advertise a number the number of conversions increased.