This blog post is part of the Website Copywriting Dissected series on best copywriter practise.
Being a web copywriter sometimes means having to make decisions about a client’s personal information. In the case of contact pages, it is no simple decision.
Do you put personal information online or do you keep it private and secure but potentially lose business?
This is not a decision you can come to alone. You need to speak to your client and explain the benefits and pitfalls of both options.
So, here is my summary of the case for both sides.
Put your email address and phone number on your contact page
In the last post, we discussed allowing your customer or prospect to contact you in multiple ways including through a contact form, email, phone number, Skype, and a number of social profile contacts too.
It’s important to make it as easy as possible for a prospect to get in touch with you.
Having only a contact form on your website is off-putting. It seems cold, impersonal and feels a bit like you don’t want anyone to contact you. It also raises questions about how long it will take to get a reply.
You’ll notice that our copywriting service phone number is on all pages. A phone number means anyone can call and get an answer pretty much right away.
Detractors of this tell me that spammers can get my email address and send me spammy messages and sell them to each other. If you’re worried about spam, consider managing your email with Google’s Gmail which has super spam protection.
Another way to stop the automatic copying of your email address for spam is to consider writing out the address: info at bigstarcopywriting dot com. That way it is recognisable as an email address to your audience, but not to a machine.
Don’t put your email address or phone number on your contact page
The biggest reason I hear for not including this kind of private information in the web copywriting is security.
Spammers have created sophisticated bits of code that read your email address off your website and post it to their databases to spam, or even sell to other spammers.
Although there are ways to hide your email address, either by writing it out as above, or using scripts to confuse the spammer’s code, they aren’t bulletproof.
A contact form that keeps your personal information on the server means you and your customers are protected. Prospects still have an easy way of contacting you, and you can get back to them when it’s convenient for you.
What’s a copywriter to do?
As a professional copywriter, I recommend that you always discuss the options together with your client, and his or her IT team. There may be legitimate business reasons for not including a contact email address and phone number on the website. There might not be good reasons, and your client may have never thought about how a form-only contact page can be off-putting to some.
This ends the Website Copywriting Dissected series. I hope you’ve found a few things in here that are useful to you. If you have any ideas for a future series on copywriting, we’d love to here them.
Leave a comment below, or contact us.
