Web Design Solutions for Email

Learn web design solutions for email in your web design to give a professional first impression, add credibility, and avoid spam. Nearly half the websites for custom web design clients I’ve helped over the last 15 years use a free email service like AOL, GMail, Hotmail, or Yahoo because it is familiar and easy to use.

This tutorial is intended for small business or sole proprietor owners where one person handles email.

My advice is having email links in your web design that send email to info@[your domain] as the primary. Having multiple email addresses on your website like sales@, service@, or even employee names is fine, too.

The key to giving that positive first impression that adds credibility is having an email address that matches your www domain name.

An email address to match your domain is more professional and shows sophistication.

Internet service providers who provide www domain name registration and monthly hosting include email packages. Choices are direct email where you select the prefix like info@ and a password to access email, or forwarding where your email is set up to be sent to another email account.

Whether direct or forwarding, you can have an email link in your web design that matches the domain.

With a direct email account that requires a password, the site owner can then use whatever email program they have on their computer to receive incoming email and reply directly without logging on to a website to view email or reply.

If you only use forwarding, your incoming email arrives automatically to the forwarding address, so if using one of those free email services, you would log on to their website with your existing password to view your inbox. Using Yahoo as an example, the downside is you can only reply with that Yahoo address.

Email replies with an address from a free service are more likely to be sent to your spam folder, or marked as spam by the customer because it is suspicious. Why risk losing a sale because your email reply address was unfamiliar?

Personally, I prefer using both direct and forwarding.

By using info@ as the primary direct email address you only have one email account to set up on your computer. Additional forwarded addresses used as email links in the web design for sales, service, or other departments are forwarded to the info@ automatically.

As a result, when I click the receive button on my computer, emails from any links on my website all arrive in one inbox. Regardless of the incoming prefix, all return replies are sent from that one info@ address, so the matching domain will be familiar, more credible, and less likely to be trashed as spam.

If you never bought premium email software, not to worry. All computers have at least one free email program that you can use. The most common email software packages for free from my experience are Outlook Express or Windows Live Mail.

Your domain, hosting, and email service provider likely has written step by step instructions with settings for creating the email account on your computer. Search their help files or contact them for assistance.

Finally, don’t make the mistake of hard coding your email address in your web design.

Spammer robots surf the internet looking at code and will recognize email addresses to harvest and use, or sell to other spammers. You should cloak your email so it cannot be recognized. View and download this PDF, 4 pages, titled web design email link tutorial to begin protecting your website from spammers.

Having a web design that gives a professional first impression, adds credibility, and avoids spam is not difficult. Work through the advice given to enhance your website email links, and ask for assistance from your service provider if needed to start using an email address that matches your www domain.