Are You Going to Answer Email?


This is a legitimate question. Not every business is set up to respond to a constant barrage of email inquiries within 24 hours, and in a world that moves at "Internet speed," an email that does not generate a reply within 24 hours might as well not be answered at all. If you are not really, for sure, always going to answer email rapidly, you may be better off either leaving your email address off the site or inserting this line: "Please allow up to three days for an email response; if you have an immediate request, our telephone lines are open from [time] to [time], [time zone]." You may also want to consider the wisdom of publishing a toll-free phone number on your Web site, since it is a service that can easily be abused by out-of-towners who are curious about your business but are not likely to become customers. If a significant part of your trade does not come from outside of your area already or you are in a business where markups are thin, you are probably better off showing only your local phone number on the Internet.

The idea of downplaying email as a means of corporate communication on a Web site may seem illogical to ardent Net users, but it is easy to get into a mental state that says, "If it's not on the Internet it doesn't exist." Even in the most connected countries, places like the United States, Finland, and Germany, this is not true. There are plenty of people, possibly a majority of those who have Net connections, who use the Internet as a necessary tool, not as an all-day, every-day source of commercial and personal interaction. Most of the people who make Web sites and sell Web services are in the "Internet is life, and life is Internet" crowd, and may often be heard talking about "Real Life" or "The Big Blue Room" (outdoors) as something they experience only now and then when they get eyestrain from too many hours looking at their biggest-on-the market computer monitors.

But unless you are selling Internet-specific products or services, most of your prospective customers probably do not fit into this mold. They are people who have lives: They use services like dry cleaning, they eat out in restaurants, hire limousines, buy airline tickets, go to night clubs, send greeting cards, need lawyers now and then, enjoy a massage, worry about maintaining their automobiles, go to concerts, buy houses, have babies who then need to be fed and clothed, and, in general, do things besides hang out online. They may not even enjoy sending or receiving email, and may use the Internet only as a glorified shopping catalog. If you provide any of the products or services listed above, people who do not live online are more likely to spend money with you than those who do, and they are used to either calling stores and service providers by phone or walking into your place of business and looking at your merchandise or discussing your services in person.

In other words, people who devote their lives to the World Wide Web may not always be the best source of advice about building a Web site that has, as its only purpose, facilitating business that takes place offline. So, no matter what the heavy-duty Web heads say, if your business is not set up to deal with email, and you are comfortable with the way you run things now, don't encourage email. Believe it or not, you can get plenty of business from a promotional Web site without email.



The Online Rules of Successful Companies. The Fool-Proof Guide to Building Profits
The Online Rules of Successful Companies: The Fool-Proof Guide to Building Profits
ISBN: 0130668427
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2001
Pages: 88
Authors: Robin Miller

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