Why do you have a website?

I have just spent a frustrating hour trying to track down the contact details of a potential partner company who sent me their details via a third party service; it's not LinkedIn but it's that kind of service.

The direct email of the person trying to contact me is not provided, nor are any of their other contact details, just a form to send them a message. A form which doesn't work, has no email contacts and just annoys the hell out of me every time I look at it.

But this is the internet, I thought, so I'll just search for the contacts name, find his company website and I'll have an email or a phone number I can use in no time. A bit of google'ng and there was the website and another one of those forms that didn't work.

So I worked my way through every page of this website, About Us, Contacts, Products, even their Board Members and no phone numbers, no office address not even an email accounts was listed on their website, only the contact form which was as broken as the first form they sent to contact me to discuss doing business together.

So this "used to be" potential partner is someone I can't contact, so there's no business opportunity for either of us - regardless of the size of the deal, how good the market fit, or the compatibility of our technology.

Do you have a website without contact details? Would you print a brochure without this information?

So please, if you want your website to do one of its most important jobs, open it now and make sure it lists an email address and a phone somewhere on the site. Next to the form on your contacts page sounds like a good place, don't you think?