Post Your E-Mail on Your Web Site *AND* Avoid Spam!

Why do entrepreneurs have Web sites? If it's to drive business to their site, are they losing them at the door?

I've recently been searching for women entrepreneurs, hobbyists, moms, travelers, etc., who post content articles to round up a bevy of Muses for my Web site, http://www.800Muses.com, which launches June 1! I need 100 by June 1, so you can imagine I'm under some time pressure here. The site will give the article writers better online presence, so you'd think the writers would really like me to be able to contact them. Well, I've been visiting free article posting sites, many of which lead to the Web sites of the authors who contributed the articles.

I find the articles, go to the site, and guess what? No contact information! This is incredibly frustrating, and it's bad business practice to boot. What is a Web site supposed to be? A one-way communication or two?

While adding a fill-in-the-blanks contact form is one option, there's an even better way to make it easy for visitors to contact you: include your bleeping e-mail address! Sorry for the swearing, I got carried away. :)

Why People Don't Post E-Mail Addresses on Their Sites

A major reason people DON'T post e-mail addresses is that spam bots (evil little computer programs) search the Web for e-mail addresses and before you can finish your double nonfat latte, you're getting penis enlargement e-mail and offers to deposit foreign currency in your bank account from His Royal Benevolent Czar from Boka Raton.

How to Foil Spam Bots

Here's a trick a wonderful Web designer (thank you, Julia Stoops, BlueMouseMonkey, http://www.bluemousemonkey.com, Portland, Ore.!) told me: encrypt your e-mail! Your e-mail link is live so your visitors can contact you, but the spam bots can't find it because it's encrypted. You don't even have to write the code yourself, because a lovely Geekster posted an automated tool that will do it for you for FREE:

http://hivelogic.com/enkoder/form

So visit the site, encrypt, and puhleez, put your contact information on your site. Your site visitors will thank you for it. And so will I!

Make Your Contact Information Easy to Find

Has this ever happened to you? You visit a site, want to contact the site owner (or Webmaster) and you can't find them! Even on their "About" page they don't include contact information.

To make it easy for visitors to contact you, include your contact information (or at minimum, a link to your contact page) on each page of your site. Web sites have many doors, and if a visitor comes in one door, you don't want them getting lost. Include contact information on every page (and a link to your home page) and make it easy for your visitor to find their way around.

If You Do Get Spammed, Don't Sit Still For It

There is something you can do about spam, forward it: spam@uce.gov collects spam complaints. Simply forward the spam to them. The FTC uses the spam stored in this database to pursue law enforcement actions against people who send deceptive email.

While they're probably inundated with spam e-mails, go ahead and inundate them some more. If they get enough complaints about any one spammer, they'll take action. And in the meantime, it makes you feel a little better.

Enjoy the rest of your latte.