We have all felt the frustration and annoyance at not being able to find what we are searching for on a website. Have you ever got stuck trying to find the phone number of a budget airline, or the name of someone to talk to at your insurance company, or an email address of your local bank branch? It’s needle-in-a-haystack time. Internet users by and large are notoriously impatient, and so any time spent fruitlessly trying to find contact information is usually guaranteed to wind people up and create a very negative impression.
So how does your company shape up, and what information do you provide on your website to make it easy for clients and prospects to contact you? Does your website give details of your staff, for example, or does it come across as a faceless organisation? Do site visitors easily find what they are looking for, or is there a chance that they end up going elsewhere in frustration?
We’ve done a survey of IFA websites and come up with some eye-opening results. Of those IFA websites surveyed:
- 78% did not have a contact email address on the home page of their website.
- 23% had no contact email address at all on their site, just a relatively long-winded enquiry form instead.
- 37% did not have a phone number listed on the home page of their website.
- 4% had no contact phone number at all on their site.
- 37% had no names or details of staff members.
Sample Of 150 IFA Websites
Clearly, sample surveys will have a certain degree of error, but having done other surveys of IFA websites in the past, these figures back up our previous findings.
Many advisers tell us how they provide a personal, friendly, face-to-face service to clients, and yet over a third of all IFA websites contain no actual information about the IFA or any other staff members. For those prospects looking around your website for evidence of a personal, friendly, face-to-face service (“just give me a name of someone I can talk to!”), how many will give up in frustration at finding no such evidence, and head for another firm instead? There’ll be more on the subject of staff details in a future article.
Although most of the sites we surveyed displayed email and phone numbers, a good number of these were tucked away within the site, behind tiny buttons that could only be found by scrolling down, and in no way immediately visible.
So why not review your website; getting a fresh pair of eyes to look at it might work well, or ask your clients how easy it is to find relevant information, and make sure that you are easily and clearly providing all the necessary information for your site visitors.