15th July 2010

Our New Office!

Well, we've finally got our new office! This week we are moving in to Askern House, which is on the High Street in Askern about 200 yards from the lake, so it's easy to find and what with a 15 minute countryside drive, it's a great drive into work for me!

Looking for new low-cost office space?

Askern House has plenty of available office space so if you're looking for an office, small or large, or even a rent-a-desk option, and all at a very good, fixed inclusive price with no bond or lawyers fees, then look no further than Askern House. It's got a professional board room with sumptious leather chairs and full length windows, so it's light and comfortable for the most boring or tedious of meetings!

There is also a free reception service plus a call answering service available with prices starting at just £25 which is perfect if you work from home or are always out and about with your business. And to add that extra professional touch, you can use the business mailing address of Askern House for just £10 a month - including for use as a registered company address. For more information call me on 01302 845072.

15th June 2010

Well tomorrow is my last day at college to complete my PTLLS (Preparing to Teach in the Lifelong Learning Sector) C&G 7303 Level 3 qualification.

This will enable me to continue providing training delivery to the Public Sector, which is now mandatory from September 2010 (though I think there is now an extension until December 2010). So all tutors, trainers and anyone delivering adult learning/training courses who has not got a full teaching qualification such as Cert. Ed or PGCE wil need to do this or they cannot deliver their course (or at least, they shouldn't be permitted to!).

I deliver my own website marketing courses for various not-for-profit funded organisations which includes DMBC LEGI funded contracts, and I have a new 4 week marketing course coming out soon, with free places when hosted by business support organisations such as Success Doncaster. Anyone interested, drop me an email or a send message through the form on our Contact us page.

2nd June 2010

It's come to my attention that an increasing amount of companies do not respond to messages sent to them via their website contact form.

So just where are these messages going?

I've come up with a list of my guesses:

• Into some black hole because it's not been set up correctly so nobody is getting them.
  
• An admin person is responsible for checking them....and hasn't been!
• The contact form emails are going into someone's inbox who isn't then passing them on (sorry, but likely to be some random administrator who feels overworked and underpaid!)
• They are being passed on but the receiver just isn't bothering to prioritise them then they are probably forgot about.
• As the last one, but they simply cannot be bothered to follow them up... for any number of reasons.
• They haven't put a Captcha function on the contact form, consequently they get bombarded with spam emails which they then delete to the spam box and in turn, their mail client automatically sends all other email from that same email address (the one used for your contact form!!) into the spam box! And so it gets completely missed because the spam box is never given the once-over before being deleted. Easy to fix - add a Captcha so you only get real email enquiries not spam junk.
  

What is clear is that not all messages can be excused by '"how strange, I never got your message" so why exactly are companies not checking that their contact form does actually work with a couple of test emails? Why aren't they wondering why they don't get any enquiries through the contact form?

Of course, it could be poor content/page copy that fails to motivate the website visitor to want to contact them or maybe they get no web visitors, but that's another story.

I have sent several messages through professional website contact forms recently and never received a reply even though I got the "thank you, we will contact you shortly" message after sending it.

Customers choose to use the contact form (if there is one) over picking up the phone or sending a normal email. Why? Because it's simple - they are on the web page, the form looks like a 60 second job to fill in and send their message there and then, and they have no reason to believe you will fail to respond - they are a potential customer after all.

The whole point of having the contact form is to increase conversion from landing on your website to becoming an enquiry and these businesses are losing out - it's crazy!

So ask yourself...

When was the last time you checked your contact form worked?

When did you last ask the person responsible for the inbox connected to the contact form, how many messages have they been getting, how do they process them, how do they deal with the spam, etc?

I bet the asnwer is "never".

So what are you waiting for? Get checking!!