Editor's Blog Section

From ‘Editor's Rant’ column, issue 52 – Summer 2009

Question: what do the web sites of the very smallest companies and the very largest tend to have in common? Answer: they often seem to make it almost impossible to find contact details for the company behind them.

Medium-sized companies, which were often guilty of this strange shyness in the past, seem generally to have seen the error of their ways, and these days usually provide a full street address on their web sites, complete with phone number and even an email address.

Very large companies still make this kind of information very hard to find, and retailers are the worst offenders. We all know why: they don’t want annoying members of the public to contact them except by the channels they choose. Understandable enough, perhaps; but the message that this sends out is depressingly negative. It says “Don’t bother us.” Is that really how you want to project your company?

Tiny companies have a different fear. They don’t want to reveal just how tiny they are. But whether big or small, these companies have missed the point: their reticence offends, and undermines their credibility.

The worst manifestation of this mentality is seen in those promotional emails that end with the imprecation: “Do not reply to this email. Your reply will not be read.”

Why not? Who said it was fine for them to bombard people with marketing mailshots, but unacceptable for recipients to respond? Any email that insults me in this way gets deleted without being read in the first place.