Making Your Online and Offline World Work Together

Yesterday I received an email message from a visitor to my Crafting Voices podcast site. Apparently, the phone number I provided in one of my pages is not working properly…the extension was somehow deactivated….oops.

It was a quick fix, but it’s a fix that I should have been able to catch myself had I been more careful about testing. And of course, it may have been broken for a while without my knowing.

Ironically, I wrote a blog post yesterday about making sure that everything is working properly on your site. Well, the same thing goes for your offline contact points (snail mail, fax numbers, and phone numbers). If you provide a phone or fax number, make sure that it’s the right number and make sure that it works. If you’re only available during certain times during the day, list those times on your site and try to make sure that you’re actually available or provide a message explaining how to further contact you. If you have voice mail, make sure your message is up to date and contains all the right info. There’s nothing like listening to a voice mail greeting that wishes you happy holidays in the middle of July. If your fax number, phone number, or postal address changes, make sure that change is reflected on your site.

So, while you’re running down your periodic test of things on your web site, take some time out to make sure that phone number and voice mail works like it’s supposed to, and if you have a fax machine, send yourself a fax to make that still works as well.