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All website contact forms discourage people from enquiring. Why?

admin — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 22:25:03 +0000

Here’s a fact about websites that most of us don’t really consider: all website contact forms discourage people from enquiring. Why? Because no one wants to send off their personal information online, and in particular, not to a business or website they have never dealt with before. And yes, many people do complete online forms, for every successful form completion there will be countless others that don’t fill it out. And for those instances it will often be the form itself is what’s deterring the website visitor from enquiring.

Let’s use the retail industry as an example

Think about this…What would you do if you walked into a book shop and before you were able to flick through the books and scan the backs of the latest publications, you were asked to provide your personal information and contact details? In a short time, that book shop wouldn’t get any people through the door and would fail. But think about it, your contact form is doing the same thing as this book shop – it’s asking for customers’ contact details before they have had chance to touch and feel the products or experience the services.

What we have to accept is that any type of contact form on a website is a hurdle (however small) that must be overcome in the sales process. The form asks for personal information from the customer before they’ve spoken to you or seen you – in other words, they’re still in ‘browsing’ mode and you’re already asking for their personal information. To make matters worse, if your website form then asks for too much information, you are just increasing the size of the hurdle. If you look at your contact forms, do you really need the full postal address at the very first stage of your relationship with the customer? Or do you absolutely have to know what product they’re interested in upfront, or do you really need to know ‘how they found your website’ at the very first step? What is more important? – less enquiries that have a bit more information (e.g. their address and that they found you via Google) or more enquiries without that information?

Remember, just the sight of a long contact form (e.g. 8 rows or more), will be enough to discourage some people from enquiring, and they won’t have even looked at what information that form is asking for. Think about it – if someone hands you a research survey with four pages of questions, are you more or less likely to complete it than a survey with one page of questions? It’s the same principle.

Making contact forms more approachable

To be clear – I like contact forms. They generate more enquiries that just adding your sales email address on the ‘Contact Us’ page. But the more basic and inviting the contact form is, the more likely it is that people will fill it out. So to start with, only include the fields in your contact form that are absolutely required for you to respond to the enquirer, plus a non-mandatory ‘comments’ field so the enquirer can give more detail about their enquiry if they want to.

Also, make sure you give the enquirer a variety of reasons to contact you. Different web pages on your site should have different contact forms asking the visitor to enquire for a variety of reasons. These reasons might include ‘download our latest white paper’, or ‘request a sample’ or simply ‘Request our brochure’. The visitor will feel like they are getting something in return for providing their contact details – they are now contacting you for something specific using a simple and easy-to-complete web form. You might not have completely removed the hurdle, but now it is a lot easier.

“Which is the perfect content management system for my new website, WordPress, Joomla or Drupal?”

admin — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 21:57:54 +0000

“Which is the perfect content management system for my new website, WordPress, Joomla or Drupal?” For a web developer, this is probably the most frequent question asked all through his career span. On the contrary, learning the answer to this question is extremely important for the new online marketers looking out for different ways to highlight their online presence.

Well, the answer is a bit confusing as all webmasters have different views about the three CMS systems. This difference in their opinions simply baffles the online marketers further, making it a lot difficult to make their own choice for their websites. Well, here below is a small review about the three CMS systems and their easily available templates.

WordPress: For most webmasters, WordPress is the first choice for all their online marketers and other clients. The reason being, it is simple, easy to install, extremely user-friendly and offers its users a range of plug-ins and customized templates for their new websites. You do not require any technical guidance or support for managing your WordPress powered website.

However, using too many WordPress plug-ins in your website or blog may cause certain PHP errors or even crash your website.

Joomla: Another highly preferred content management system, Joomla is specifically designed for the huge masses. This new CMS system recently became extremely popular mainly due to its classy visual interface. The system like WordPress is easy to install and also offers a variety of plug-ins for additional function in your website. You can also avail various Joomla templates on the web for giving your website a fresh new look.

On the contrary, the Joomla CMS system and templates is perfect for only those online marketers who have some technical skills on managing websites and its content. The system is a bit complex than WordPress.

Drupal: The latest CMS launched after WordPress and Joomla, Drupal is technically the most advanced system available on the web. It is strong, secured, speedy and highly effective. Moreover, the layout and the presentation of Drupal are less restricted than that offered by wordpress and Joomla. If you are skilled enough in HTML and PHP, only then Drupal is your perfect choice. The Drupal based templates can be largely found on the web only on special orders by the marketers for their website.

As compared to WordPress and Joomla, Drupal is far more technical and hence, is preferred only by the highly skilled webmasters.

Google sparks real estate listings brawl

admin — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 22:46:23 +0000

Google sparks real estate listings brawl

Julian Lee, Marketing Editor The Age
July 27, 2009

GOOGLE is facing the greatest challenge yet to its might in Australia as two of its largest media customers threaten to pull their business over the internet company’s decision to enter the real estate listings market.

Fairfax Media and News Limited are independently weighing up whether to pull the millions of dollars they collectively spend on buying key search terms on Google following the latter’s decision to list properties for sale on Google Maps.

Domain, which is owned by Fairfax, and Realestate.com.au, which is controlled by News, dominate the market for properties being searched for on the internet and the $144 million of classified advertising revenue that goes with it.

What had been a symbiotic relationship between Google and its media partners in Australia has been showing signs of strain.
In April News Corporation’s chairman, Rupert Murdoch, fired the first shot, accusing Google of not paying the media for content that it was using to aggregate and sell ads against.

Google began sourcing listings from real estate aggregators such as Homehound and My Home this month and opened up the service to allow real estate agents to list their properties free on Google Maps.

Greg Ellis, the chief executive of REA Group – which operates realestate.com.au – welcomed competition in the marketplace but added: “It will be interesting to see how Google reconciles its ability to encourage companies to purchase Adwords, buy Google Maps and DoubleClick services and then compete with those companies who currently or intend to buy these services.

“It’s a discussion that should occur across the Australian internet landscape, not just within REA. We are reviewing our options. No decision has yet been made.”
Lloyd Whish-Wilson, the head of Fairfax’s NSW metropolitan publishing, which includes Domain’s online and print properties, and the publisher of the Herald, released a short statement. “We are looking at our options at the moment. We are obviously not keen to support a would-be competitor with our revenue,” it said.
At stake is a market that grew 38 per cent last year and that the analyst Frost & Sullivan forecasts will grow 23 per cent this year.

Nielsen reckons nearly half a million people a day visit property websites, with realestate and Domain accounting for nearly 90 per cent of that traffic.
But almost a third of their traffic comes via Google, Hitwise reports, which raises the question of who needs whom more? Google has 92 per cent of the search advertising market and this year is expected to book revenues close to $1 billion.

Simon Baker, chief executive of the online classified marketing specialist Classified Ad Ventures, said Google would struggle to get more than half the agents listing their properties on Google Maps. It would also find it difficult to ensure that listings were up to date and free of scammers who might target Australian property hunters with bogus listings.

Mr Baker, a former chief executive of REA, said Google might be shooting itself in the foot. Its real estate service risks undermining its core business model, which relies on selling advertising against internet search queries.

“Google is moving from being a search engine to a portal,” he said. “Instead of sending you to other websites – which have paid money to be there on its listings – it is now serving up the end data itself. That then raises the question: why would you need to go to the other sites and why would they then pay Google money [for search key words].

“Google has opened up a Pandora’s box of questions.”
A spokeswoman for Google, Lucinda Barlow, said it had received “great feedback” about its site to date and would like to work more closely with Fairfax and REA to take its listings – which both groups are refusing to do.
“We are partners and we would like to discuss this [issue],” she said.