We’ve already talked about setting up your first company website and why it’s so important to have a presence on the web. Even if your business is mostly of the brick-and-mortar persuasion, many of today’s customers will do a little bit of research online first. This is true of restaurants, printing houses, design agencies, and just about any kind of business. By the same accord, many customers will want to contact you via email.

First and foremost, your website should prominently feature a way for potential customers to contact you. A simple contact page containing your mailing address, phone number, and email address will do just fine. Your email address should be at your website’s domain. This provides a much higher level of professionalism than if your email address has the @gmail.com or @yahoo.com extension, even if you use these services to manage your email.

Beyond this, you should also realize the importance of email signatures. Signatures are the brief snippets of text that are added to the end of every outgoing message. While your personal email may have a signature with a favorite quote, your business email should stick to the basics and re-iterate all your contact information. The standard format for a business email signature would be something like this:

John Doe, Director of Sales
ABC Company Ltd.
123 Fake Sreet
Anytown, BC A1B 2C3
Phone: 123-456-7890
Fax: 123-456-7899
Email: johndoe@abccompany.com
www.abccompany.com

This way, customers don’t need to go back to your website to find the most important contact information. It also adds a certain level of professionalism to each outgoing email. If you happen to have any seasonal promotions or anything that you’d like to draw their attention to, you can add this to the end of your email signature as well. Maybe you want to make a quick note about a coupon code, for example.