Re: Contact Standards Across Businesses & Internet Shops

Thanks for the references to the HCard rich snippet microformat, Michael.
After some further browsing, I noticed there is also a HCard generator to
help people and organizations compile their contact details with the correct
html markup:

http://microformats.org/code/hcard/creator

I intend to speak to my team mates about creating an adapted version of the
HCard Creator form, so that it is optimized for retailers and e-commerce
companies.  However, I think there are still some important questions that
need to be clarified before diving into the deep end and asking companies to
take this initiative up.  From our research, many people are searching for
either 'Contact ABC-Company' or 'XYZ-Company Head Office'.  The current
hcard microformat does not appear to differentiate for different contact
numbers, such as one for sales, another for support, technical, and another
for the main head office (HQ) or switchboard/operator.  I notice there is a
mailing list for the Microformats site, so I intend to shoot an email in
their direction.  I believe we can get the support of companies and their
adoption of the hcard format if we can show that there are projects being
actively developed to collect and compile all that company data into a
unified site or application that will ultimately increase the contact
between customers and companies.  I can ask our developers to dedicate some
resources to such a project, but we would need to have adequate research &
planning beforehand so that they are working efficiently.

Thanks for your assistance and input.

Best regards,

Junaid Nazir

SuperStoreSearch Team
--------------------------
Merchant Support

www.superstoresearch.com | Online Shopping Guide

Email:   junaid.nazir@superstoresearch.com
Phone:  0798 555 333 0

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On 15 October 2010 22:36, Mike Hanson <mhanson@mozilla.com> wrote:

> 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
>