By Katrina Olson
This week wraps up our discussion of attention-getting content. The last two points are “Make it easy to respond” and “Make phone numbers clickable and trackable.” Both are pretty straightforward and absolutely necessary.
Of course we want our website visitors to respond. But sometimes it’s as difficult as trying to read a foreign language…like reading “reply if it pleases you” in French!
Make it easy to respond.
This seems like common sense. But how many times have you had to scour a website for a phone number, email or physical address. Or clicked a link that didn’t work?
Do you want customers to call or email you? Be sure to make your phone number and email easy-to-find. Put them at the top and bottom of every page, not just on the contact page. This holds true for printed materials, too—especially catalogs.
Do you want customers to visit your location? Provide a map with driving directions. Use familiar landmarks if possible (e.g. across from Union Station) and be sure to include an accurate street address for GPS users.
Do you want them to order? Offer online ordering, or better yet, create a mobile app for their smartphone or other digital devices.
Maybe you want visitors to create an account or apply for credit. Create an online application form and confirm via email that their application was successfully submitted; then give a time frame for approval.
Make phone numbers clickable and trackable for mobile devices.
If a phone number is written in a recognizable format such as (555) 555-1212 or 1+ 555-555-1212, most smartphones will automatically recognize it and convert it to a link. Also, many content management systems like WordPress offer plugins like Telephone Number Linker that makes numbers clickable on mobile but not on desktop.
If you want to replace the number with anchor text, like “Call us” or use an image instead of a phone number, you many need to manually create a clickable link (see the link at the end of this section for instructions).
You can also set up your mobile web pages to not only trigger a call, but enable tracking at the same time. Using a combination of JavaScipt (programming language), jQuery (a quick and easy library of JavaScript code), and regular expressions (a search pattern language), you can create code track when someone on a mobile device clicks on your phone number. By incorporating Google Tag Manager, you can set up a custom macro to determine if the user is on mobile, and create a Google Analytics Event to track those calls. This link explains how.
If you’re a little stymied by all that coding jargon, Google Analytics partners with 19 different call tracking companies that can capture data and generate reports about the call length, source of the call, conversions and more. Here’s a link with a list of call tracking companies.
Sometimes, in our rush to get things done—especially your ever-changing and ever-evolving website, we forget that it’s all about the customer. Take a few moments to look at your website through the customer’s eyes and see what you can do to make it more user-friendly. If you’re too close to it to be objective, ask a customer or friend for feedback.
NEXT WEEK: Create a response-generating “Contact Us” page.
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Olson is a veteran marketing and public relations consultant. She has written for tED magazine’s print edition since 2005, judged tED magazine’s Best of the Best Competition since 2006, and emceed the Best of the Best Awards ceremony for a total of seven years. Reach her at katrina@olsonmarketing.net.
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