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Provide contact information on every page

Provide an e-mail address and/or telephone number, or a conspicuous "Contact" link to this information, on every page of the site. If resources permit, consider facilitating online chat sessions between your customers and your product experts. Many home users have a single telephone line, and online assistance allows these customers to receive assistance while remaining logged onto the Internet.

The contact oppurtunities you provide customers reflect the value you place on customer service, and some customers will shop elsewhere if they feel they can get better service. Specifically, customers often need to talk to product experts before placing an order, or need special assistance from a customer service representative after placing an order. Sometimes customers simply need to be reassured that there is a human presence behind the Web site. For these reasons, companies that provide contact mechanisms show increased sales (Lohse & Spiller, 1998).

When providing contact mechanisms:

• Develop a policy and strategy for responding to e-mail in a timely manner. "Timely" is defined in Web terms as "within 24 hours" or at least "by the following business day," so be sure to have the staff to support the contact mechanisms your provide. Failure to respond timely to customer inquiries breaks a promise, and so is worse than failure to provide a means of contact.

• Indicate the geographic scope of toll-free phone numbers.

• Provide an additional phone number for international customers.

• Provide 24 hour assistance if at all possible. Otherwise, include the hours of operation, with the time zone specified. Note that "weekend" does not mean Saturday and Sunday in all countries.

• Include the languages understood by your support staff, otherwise international customers may assume your staff understands their native languages.

• Avoid presenting long, tedious lists of contact addresses and telephone numbers that users must wade through.

• Advise users not to include credit card numbers and other personal data in e-mail messages.

Tip: If you find that many of your customers ask the same questions, include answers to these questions on your site, or make the needed information more prominent on your site.

Provide assistance when users have forgotten their passwords

When users forget their passwords and/or IDs, provide immediate assistance via the Web if at all possible. Use other media, such as telephone, or postal mail, if you need to increase security. E-mail delivery, while not as secure as telephone or postal mail, may be more secure than Web delivery.

One way of helping users remember passwords is to ask them to create password hints when they register with the site. For instance, if a password is the name of a user's cat, that user can store a hint such as "my cat's name." The site then displays this hint when the user cannot recall the password. Password hints can allow users to complete their purchases without further delay or embarassment.

Tip: On sites in which users cannot see each other's IDs, consider allowing e-mail addresses as user IDs. People with common names may experience difficulty creating and remembering a unique user ID. John Smith, for instance, may be jsmith on one site, johnsmith on another site, johnsmith1 on another site, et cetera. E-mail addresses are unique identifiers, and most users have theirs remembered. Provide an easy way for users to change their IDs easily, especially if registrants use e-mail addresses, which are subject to change.

Provide clear and informative error messages

Anticipate errors that may occur, and provide clear explanations and instructions for resolving these problems. Providing helpful error messages enables users to resolve problems quickly and increases their satisfaction with your site.

Provide helpful error messages for:

• Incomplete and incorrect information in forms

• Requests for documents that do not exist

• No documents found matching a search request

Always state the problem without placing blame, and provide a polite, helpful suggestion for correcting the problem. For instance, if a user requests a document that does not exist in the domain, the following message could appear: Our apologies. . . The document you have requested does not exist on this system. Please check the URL and try again or use our search function to find the information you are looking for. If you believe you have received this message in error, please use the Contact link on this page to report this error. Avoid cryptic, rude messages like "Error 404".

Also offer a choice of mechanisms for resolving the problem. For search errors you can provide search tips, a link to an alphabetical listing of products, and a list of some of the most popular products/pages on the site.

Address users' frequently asked questions

Provide easy-to-find answers to common questions so that customers can complete their tasks quickly and easily. Addressing their questions reduces customer service costs and helps establish trustworthiness (Cheskin Research & Studio Archetype/Sapient, 1999).

The following are questions applicable to all e-commerce sites:

• Is it safe to use my credit card?

• Which credit cards do you accept?

• What will you do with my personal information, such as my name and addresses?

• What forms of payment do you accept?

• How much do you charge for shipping? And do you ship overseas?

• When should I receive my product(s)?

• Can I return something I buy online? If yes, what procedures do I follow?

• What do I do if I have forgotten my account password?

• How do I order online?

• What are my other options for ordering products?

• Whom do I call if I need assistance?

• What taxes, if any, do I have to pay on the merchandise?

Also address product-related questions that your users may have. For instance, users of travel sites may want to know if they can make a reservation now and pay later.

Address important questions immediately or at the point of need. Many users will consciously or subconsciously want reassurance about security before they begin shopping and before providing their credit card information. Address this concern at the point of need by providing a brief message such as "Guaranteed Secure" on key pages, and link from the message to more detailed security information.

Also provide easy access to frequently asked questions (FAQs) from all shopping pages. With the FAQs format, different users can receive answers to many different questions in one location. They also may feel more inclined to use the information than they would if it were found in a section called "Help." (Many people are reluctant to ask for help.) Remember that new users may be unfamiliar with the concept of FAQs, and explain this term when providing the link.

Provide simple definitions and explanations of important terms

Define and explain important terms so users can educate themselves about your products and services. For instance, sites that sell computers need to define and explain the significance of terms like MHz, GB, and RAM. Sites that sell audio equipment will need to define and explain the significance of terms like digital outputs and oversampling.

Some terms can be defined in FAQs or other types of assistance, but explanations are most effective when provided in context as users need them. Provide an explanation or link to one wherever each important term is used.

Provide product selection assistance

Assist customers in selecting the product(s) that best meets their individual needs. One method is to provide a system that identifies users' goals, and recommends products based on these goals. Such a system could ask users a series of questions designed to elicit their requirements, and based on their input identify the products that best meet their needs. This technique can serve to educate or remind users about the issues they need to consider when making a purchase decision.

When designing an assistant,

• Make the purchase assistance optional (i.e. enable users to browse product categories)

• Ensure that the recommended products are the ones that best meet the customer's needs

• Avoid limiting the users' choices unnecessarily or making arbitrary recommendations

• Enable customers to rate/rank the importance of product attributes as a means to solve contradictory or incompatable requirements

• Enable users to change their answers or specifications

• Enable users to skip input categories that are not important to them

• Reveal the logic of the product recommendation as users are responding to the questions

• Enable users to compare recommended products side-by-side

Note: Don't waste users' time or mislead them by providing a tool that gives bad recommendations. Test product selection assistance with users to ensure that its recommendations are appropriate.

Provide assistance to guide users through multiple step processes

Provide immediate and detailed user assistance to guide customers through multiple-step processes such as purchasing products. Providing this assistance demonstrates professionalism and commitment to meeting the needs of customers, which in turn contribute to trustworthiness. Since shoppers are more likely to buy from sites they trust, effective user assistance can have a positive impact on sales.

Know and understand the user assistance mechanisms that are available to you. Below are some different types of "just-in-time" assistance, made available when and where users need it:

• Inline text--text embedded in an interface that defines an interface object or that provides details about a task or action

• Inline messages--messages that display automatically to provide information to users about system errors or processing status

• Hover help--messages that "pop up" when the mouse pointer pauses over interface objects such as buttons, checkboxes, and fields, to provide additional information about these objects

• Multi-step assistance tools--a tool that automatically completes tasks based on information gathered from users

The table below suggests some mechanisms appropriate for different situations.

However, because some customers will feel uncomfortable knowing you are keeping information about them, order histories should not be saved by default. Keep a purchase history only for those customers who have registered with your site and have requested this service.