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Address and Contact Information in Your Website Design
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This blog entry is really more a personal observation about if and where you should have address and contact information on your website when planning your web development. I was recently browsing a website which is involved in catering and functions / party set-ups etc. I liked the descriptions of the functions and the menus, etc., so I wanted to see where this company is. I could not see their geographic location on the site. I clicked on their "contact us" link hoping to see their location there. All I found there was a contact form and mobile numbers. Now, I don't know how mobile numbers work in the country you're in, but here in South Africa mobile numbers have no dialing code which can be used to identify their location, it could literally be anywhere in the country. So, I still had no idea where this company was. They could be in a part of South Africa 1500 Kms away. I read a fairly large amount of text and finally found out which city they're in. This text was buried quite deep in the page and its unlikely that most visitors would find this. |
Should you display address and contact information on your site?
YES! It really depends on the type of business you run what you'll need to place there. For instance, we at PHP Web Host do not have a walk in office. All of our business is conducted via the internet or over the phone. Also, our data centre is not located in South Africa and we're a small group of people who work in separate locations. So, we do not display a physical address, after all, which one would we use? We do however display our telephone number prominently at the top of every page of our site, together with the city information (e.g., Tel. (Jhb, SA): 011 083 7085).
This means that anyone visiting our site immediately knows where we're from and how to contact us.
Getting back to the event's website. Its really crucial for them to display at least their city, but preferably their suburb too. Why is this important for these types of websites? Because this is a location based service. If you are in Cape Town and the event's company is in the Free State, you'd probably not use them as they're over 1000Kms away. Not knowing where they are, I suspect most people would skip them too! This company website also had a standard footer and header, ideal for placing the City information.
In conclusion
Do put your location information in a prominent place on your website, particularly if the product or service you sell is sold within a certain area.
I'd love to hear your opinion on this. Do you usually dig to find information about the area of the site you're looking at, or do you simply write it off?
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