Hiding from actual contact
Posted on March 12, 2008
Filed Under Effective Websites, Marketing, Usability
In my previous post I wrote about information missing from a website, or at least very difficult to find. The information was absolutely crucial to the organization and to the users of the website. It was missing not so much because the information wasn’t important, but because the website owners assumed that everyone already knew the answer.
Their mistake. Not only did I not know the answer, but the first person I asked, and who gave me the correct information, later began to wonder and went to the same website to (try to) confirm what he’d told me.
That was unfortunate, and probably not all that uncommon. After all, a similar website in a different country also managed to hide the same information four levels deep.
But there are a great many sites that leave out or obscure important information, and sometimes it seems to happen on purpose. All too often the hidden information is the very reason users have come to the site in the first place.
How to contact the business. Phone numbers. Email addresses. Contact forms.
It’s a simple question of usability. I would guess that contact information is one of the most common reasons people visit a website. As such, a link to contact info should be clearly provided up front—ideally near the top of the home page. Sort of a sincere way of saying, “Your visit is important to us and if you want to get in touch, damn it, we want to hear from you.”
In reality, what happens? If a company doesn’t already have your business, they make it easy to contact them. Links, phone numbers, forms, whatever you want. On the other hand, if it’s a situation where the company is likely to already have your business or they’ve already sold you their product, well, it’s perhaps not quite as important and so maybe you have to jump through some hoops.
That’s the way it is on many sites and we’ve all run into the problem. And as lowly consumers there may not be a great deal we can do about it.
Except this—be aware, be very aware that businesses do give at least some thought to their websites and if easy and useful contact information is not clearly provided, it’s because the business designed it that way. A conscious decision was made.
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One of my previous employers, a luxury boat manufacturer, actually made the conscious decision to remove all company contact information from their website in an attempt to force customers to do all business through the dealers rather than through the manufacturer. This was primarily a poor decision made so to avoid having to expand the customer service department.
I don’t know what my point is… maybe that even when people ARE making conscious decisions concerning a website, those decision makers are often Douche-bag, coke-fiending executives that don’t even know how to type correctly on a keyboard, yet alone understand the basics of website usability or internet marketing.