Are you This hard to get hold of?

Why do companies spend hundreds of thousands on great PR, advertising & building buzz to drive you to their website, only to completely mess up the last hurdle?

Springwise had a feature about a great new site www.adperk.com. So I went to have a look & decided to request a media pack – this looks perfect for a side project we’re working on.

Now, I should admit that we Aussie’s often have trouble filling out forms on some American sites because the format of our phone numbers is different… but this was crazy!

Here’s part of the email I wrote to them… but please don’t just read it – make sure your site doesn’t make this very serious error

I just found you via springwise as did I’m sure a few hundred (few thousand?) other people.I requested a media pack as I’m very interested in both using use to advertise a product & as a case study in an upcoming keynotehowever – the phone number field is almost impossible to complete. I had to read the source code of the site in order to get past your form!! Not many people will go to that effort.

I imagine that the techs that set up the site were given the spec of your CRM system
that says numbers have to be either 999-999-9999 or 999.999.9999
the problem is your customers & prospects don’t know that
(999) 999 9999
999 999 9999 (just spaces!)

neither worked!!
& as for my real number +61-408-297 802
not a chance!

I can understand only wanting American advertisers on your platform… but you HAVE to make it easy for them to get in touch. Let your visitors enter their number however they like (or at least AT A MINIMUM give them an example to copy)

Make it easy! Why not just have your staff member enter the number into the CRM when they actually make that call – it’ll take 3 seconds.
Better yet – have a techie write a bit of code that accepts the number & turns it into something your CRM can cope with.

I hope you change it soon & I hope the business grows.