The first thing you need to establish is exactly what customer information you need, and how you plan to use it effectively, as simply gathering customer information for the sake of it is a waste of time. More to the point, if visitors to your website give their information in expectation that you are going to send them something or reply to them, and you don’t, their first impression of your website is likely to be a very negative one.

If you’ve met with a professional digital marketing agency and have established a plan for marketing to your visitors and customers, then that should determine the way in which you are going to communicate with them, including marketing to them as well. The two most common ways this is done is by telephone and email, although good old-fashioned mailings via the postal service, still work in many industries.

You need to ensure that by collecting information on your website that all the proper security elements are in place, including an SSL certificate. It is highly unlikely that anyone is going to enter personal information if, at the top of your website, the words ‘NOT SECURE’ appear.

The tried and trusted method of marketing online is via email, and if this is the route you plan to take then there are numerous services that will facilitate this for you. The most popular ones are Aweber and GetResponse, and one of the reasons for that is that their deliverability rates are some of the highest. That means more of the email you send actually gets to the inbox of those you send it to, versus it landing in a spam folder, never to be seen or read

To collect emails or phone numbers, your website design can incorporate simple opt-in boxes where visitors can enter their details. A great strategy is to offer them something as an incentive for doing so such as a discount voucher, or a freebie