Re: Contact Standards Across Businesses & Internet Shops

What you describe sounds exactly like HCard [1], Junaid.

It allows for the embedding of semantic contact markup in web pages, in a way that is designed to be easily read by spiders or user-agents.  It is already used by billions of pages. [2]

Best,
Michael

[1] http://microformats.org/wiki/hcard
[2] http://microformats.org/2010/07/08/microformats-org-at-5-hcards-rich-snippets
--
Michael Hanson, Mozilla Labs

On Oct 12, 2010, at 1:43 PM, Junaid Nazir wrote:

> I have a question about what current standards there are, if any, for contact information across businesses and companies?  We work with over 500 internet retailers ( via http://www.superstoresearch.com ) in the UK shopping industry and have access to thousands more, but there does not appear to be any useful standardization of contact information for these companies and the business sector is certainly an area that could benefit from having a common platform through which consumers could get in touch more easily.
> 
> For example, websites will list their telephone numbers in varying places, some prefer to include them above the fold on every single page, while others may keep them on a single page that is not as easy to find.  There are often variations for the number to call depending on the nature of the enquiry - such as a dedicated number for orders & sales and a separate number for customer services and technical support.  Some retailers have multiple store locations.  Consumers are often interested in the nearest available store and the store opening times.  All these varying types of information could be compiled in a standardized way, enabling useful services to emerge that help consumers to get in touch with businesses much more easily and quickly.  Having such standards implemented as rich snippet data by those websites would further help them to be discovered by spider bots that would compile and update such information.
> 
> I am open to suggestions on how we can help and contribute to these ideas, including reaching out to our contacts in the online shopping retail industry to get their help and support in providing such contact information in a standardized manner.  Some planning beforehand will greatly enhance the amount and quality of the data that can be compiled.
> 
> Please put forward any ideas and suggestions on what the next appropriate step would be.
> 
> Best regards,
> 
> Junaid Nazir
> 
> SuperStoreSearch Team
> --------------------------
> Merchant Support
> 
> http://www.superstoresearch.com | Online Shopping Guide
> 
> Email:   junaid.nazir@superstoresearch.com
> Phone:  0798 555 333 0
> 
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