Today I received an email from someone with the subject heading ‘Urgent’ — they had used my contact form to send me details (telephone number included) of a friend.
They believed that the contact form was public, therefore their friends’ details would be all over Google in a few hours, hence the urgency for any correction to be made.
What if other people haven’t sent a message or used the contact form because they thought the same thing?
The fix? This one was easy I just added a line of text right before the form reading ‘your inquiry is private and sent to my inbox only’ – a small thing to do, but these small things make the difference especially online.
Why?
What we think is obvious or apparent may not be to others.
Here’s a few more, and I’m inviting you to go to your website as a visitor, or ask someone who has never been to your website before to head over and ask them for feedback.
Better still, sit with them and watch their behaviour. Where do they go first? What do they click on? What are they asking? Do they like flash?
Payment for goods: I use PayPal. Some people don’t have a PayPal account so underneath your ‘buy’ button add a quick line of text ‘you don’t need a PayPal account to purchase’. You may also want to add ‘orders are processed by [insert name of merchant], we don’t store your payment details’. What does your say? Does it make people feel super safe to buy from you?
Tell people what will happen next. A few months ago another email from an angry person saying I sent to many emails. They had signed up for the updates (3 emails the first week) and all the free resources. Yes, I agree they got bombarded. Probably about 23 emails in the first week.
The free resources on this site are auto responders, all set to go out at a certain time, of course, people can sign up for them all. But I needed to tell people what to expect.
The solution was easy I added to the sign-up areas ‘if you have signed up for all the resources on the website, expect plenty emails the first week, it calms down after that!’
Tell people what to expect from you, even if you can’t do it at the point of sign up, do it in an email or on a thank you page. And then do what you promised.
Not receiving information. Sometimes my email provider shows a delay in sending out automatic welcome/hello/how you doing messages. Tell people on your thank you pages ‘there may be a teeny delay. If you haven’t got what you asked for in 10 minutes, please try again, or tell me so I can help you out.’
What would you expect to happen? Break down your processes into stages and take people by the hand each step of the way.
Accessibility: Is your website easy to read? The text on this website used to be size 12 — far too small. Yes, someone told me. Change made.
About Page: the second most viewed page on your or any website. Can people find yours? As you ask someone to go through your website, say nothing but watch how they interact with it, did they go there? Make it visible.
Note to self: need to add mine back in the sidebar.
A FAQ page: (and writing this, I can’t see the link to mine anymore. Whoops. Needs found.) A FAQ is a great page, here’s one from my firewalking website – again think about users to your website and what they will be asking, what do people typically ask you about the work you do?
This page is also a great place to start to own your own voice in your website content.
Give it a call to action. A submit question box would be great on this page.
Final thoughts: websites are never finished, they always need tweaked and worked on. I see so much on my own. Don’t get overwhelmed, make the amendments as you go if needed.
Your Turn
Do you have a quick tip that you want to share? One that someone pointed it out to you? Feel free to share below.
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