Recently this website received an inquiry e-mail along the lines of this:
We are working to improve our (sitenotpublicizedhere).com site. I was looking to understand your services and expertise.
They did provide the proper contact information. It does not seem to be spam, although it kind of feels that way.
It was a polite enough wording, but the sentiment behind it sends off warning signs.
We have a website and they were on it. It details what we do. I don’t mind customizing what we COULD do for somebody, but “improve” doesn’t tell me anything from their viewpoint. So basically we’re in a position to reiterate what we do from our general information on our web site. I know people are busy. So are we. I know people don’t like to read as much when they access a web site through their phone. I would recommend that if they are interested, they should read what we provide on our website.
I’d also recommend that you have a plan for what you are asking for in the email. If you know you want to improve your website, provide some criteria for such improvements. Do you want online commerce? Better visibility in search engines? Deeper traffic in the web site. I understand that people don’t know what they don’t know, but if you want to “improve” your site you must have some kind of reasoning of what that improvement is.
Otherwise, it sounds like can kicking at best. That is, in our industry, a low incentive contact. I didn’t respond to it the first day. I didn’t respond to it the second day. Here we are on the third day and I’m more motivated to write this post than to respond to them. Why? After 25 years, my experience tells me we’ll never hear from this person again. If they can’t bother to read our web site’s info on our services, why should I expect them to read an email with the same general content on their phone either? But by writing this post, maybe one person in the future will think, I should provide specifics if I’m going to contact these folks.
What I eventually decided to do was to just send them the links to the relevant pages of content for their general request, and watch Google Analytics to see if they follow up.
The email bounced… Address not found.