Making your phone number visible on your site

• 6.12.2007

People can be quite wary of adding their phone number in a prominent place on their site.

I suppose the worry is that clients will abandon the carefully crafted site they have spent time & money on & just call their order through instead, or they will experience an unmanageable increase in calls from people asking for help. But users generally enjoy doing their shopping on the web & as long as your site is easy to use, with clear calls to action & customer help, the amount of calls shouldn’t increase by much, if at all.

The main reason for adding a phone number is to engender trust in your user. Adding your phone number gives a user a feeling of security, that the site they’re shopping on has nothing to hide & is easy to contact if help is needed.

It’s all part of the customer service a company offers on their site & the better the customer service, the happier your customers & happier customers = more sales!

Useful Links

http://www.e-consultancy.com/news-blog/364358/10-reasons-why-your-
website-sucks.html
Prominently displayed contact details can help engender trust

http://www.conversion-rate-experts.com/articles/101-google-website
-optimizer-tips/
Show additional ways to order – for example, by phone, by fax. Each customer has a way that they prefer to order. Sometimes the presence of the phone number itself can increase reassurance, even if the people don’t actually phone you.

http://www.webcredible.co.uk/user-friendly-resources/polls/trust-buying.shtml
Poll results on what makes a user trust a website when buying online

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