A Site With Three Different Phone Numbers

The site

A landscaping company with a competent site and three telephone numbers on it.

The header shows a mobile number.

The footer shows a landline, which turns out to be a line disconnected two years ago.

And the contact page shows a third number, which is a call tracking number set up during an advertising campaign that ended in 2021.

The inference a visitor makes

• Which one is real.
• Is this two businesses.
• Is the site out of date.
• Will anybody answer.
• I will try the first one.

Most people do try the first one and reach somebody, so the business never sees a problem. What it does not see is the person who tried the footer number, got a disconnected tone, and concluded the business had closed.

How three numbers happen

Which is always the same story.

The original landline is in the footer template from the site's first build.

A mobile was added later because that is what actually gets answered.

A tracking number arrived with a campaign and was never removed when it ended.

Nobody has ever looked at all three at once, because each was added in a different place at a different time.

That is the entire mechanism and it applies to addresses and email addresses equally.

The listings are worse

Which is where the real damage sits.

The same drift has happened across your local listing, your industry directories, your social profiles, and anywhere a supplier submitted your details.

Search a few of those and you will find whichever number was current when each was created.

That matters beyond confusion, since consistent details across listings is one of the things that supports local visibility, and inconsistent ones do not help.

So the fix on the site is the smaller half of the job.

Fixing the listings is the half with a measurable return.

A worked example

A business searched its own name and found seven listings.

Four showed the current mobile, two showed the disconnected landline, and one showed the tracking number.

They picked the mobile, updated all seven, and set up forwarding on the tracking number rather than releasing it.

Two months later a customer mentioned having called an old number the previous year and assumed they had gone out of business.

That customer had come back only because a neighbour recommended them again.

Nobody knows how many did not.

Do not simply delete an old number

Which is the mistake in the other direction.

An old number appears on vehicles, invoices, printed material, and in customers' phones, and those keep being dialled for years.

Forward it to the current number rather than letting it go, which costs very little and catches everybody working from an old reference.

Where a tracking number came from an ended campaign, forwarding it is cheaper than discovering it was on a vehicle wrap.

Keep the forward running for at least two years and check the volume before ending it.

A number still receiving calls is telling you something is still out there with it printed on.

The same applies to the address

Which drifts identically and is checked less.

A former unit number, a suite that was renumbered, or an address written three different ways across listings.

Pick one format, exactly as it appears on your registration, and use it everywhere without variation.

That includes whether you write Street or St, and whether the unit number comes before or after.

Consistency here is worth more than any single detail being optimal.

Make them tappable while you are there

Since this is the moment you are editing every one.

A number written as plain text on a phone requires copying it out, which a meaningful share of people will not do.

Every instance should be a link that dials.

Check each one on an actual phone rather than assuming, since a number inside an image is the version that looks correct and does nothing.

That is two minutes and it is the difference between a number and a call.

Check who answers each one

A step that sounds obvious and is skipped by everybody who does this exercise.

Ring every number on the site and in every listing, from a phone that is not yours, and note what happens.

A disconnected tone, a voicemail nobody empties, a personal mobile answered with a name rather than the business, and a number reaching a former employee are four different problems.

The third is more common than the first and more damaging, since a customer who reaches somebody answering with just a first name is unsure whether they have the right business.

Ten minutes of dialling tells you what a customer actually experiences, which no amount of checking the page can.

Fix the email addresses at the same time

Since they drift identically and are checked even less than numbers.

A site frequently carries an address from a former provider, one belonging to somebody who left, and a general one nobody monitors.

Somebody who writes to the wrong one gets no reply and concludes you ignored them, which is worse than a disconnected telephone tone because there is no signal that anything went wrong.

Pick one address, use it everywhere, and make sure it reaches more than one person.

Then send a message to every other address you find on the site and see which of them arrive anywhere.

The counter-case within the site

The rest of the site is fine.

Services are described clearly, the work is photographed properly, and the service area is named.

This is a maintenance failure rather than a design one, which is why it survives on otherwise good sites.

And a business genuinely running two numbers, such as a separate emergency line, has a legitimate reason for two, provided each is labelled.

Labelled is the operative word, since two numbers with an explanation beside each is fine and two without any is simply confusion.

Write what each is for in three words beside it and the problem disappears.

Office and emergency, or sales and service, is all it takes.

What to change

1. Pick one number.
2. Search the site for the others.
3. Check the footer template.
4. Forward the old ones.
5. Search your own business name.
6. Fix every listing found.
7. Make each one tappable.

Step five is where most of the damage is hiding, since the site can be corrected in ten minutes and the listings hold whichever number was current when each was created.

The tappability question is covered in phone numbers that are not links.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.