If anyone has any input on this topic, I would love to hear from you asap. I am struggling to make a decision and hoping to do it soon.

I have an ecommerce site and have never had a phone number on the website. Our sales are down about 25% and I am thinking about adding a 1-800 number to the site. I am wondering if anyone has any input on whether or not this might have an effect on our sales.

I've read that having a 1-800 number can raise sales by 30%, but I question if that is true. I would hope to just be able to recoup the salary of the person I hire.

I've been thinking about this for quite some time. I think I need to do it for our customers as they do get frustrated at not being able to contact someone.

We've been so small that it's not really been an option before now, but I would really appreciate any input or advice on whether or not adding a phone number to a website has been a good move or a bad one.

I would at least post a phone number, as we get calls from customers just asking if we are real etc etc and then proceed to shop.
I know the 1st thing I check for when shopping online is the contact section for details of the store!
The less I see the less I may shop at it and leave.

Now as for an 800 number? Years ago I think that helped, Butttttttttttttttttt can you handle the calls etc.
And these days most of use probably don't pay long distance anyway due to all the options available. So that may not be an issue as much these days.

Also we prefer our customer shop online as those can be handled much faster, safer and with many less people than phone calls, We also offer many items cheaper online only for that reason, not to mention the automation of uploading tracking numbers etc etc

Problem is each business has different needs and customers so you may never get the perfect answer.

Dave

We definitely prefer that customer shop online particularly when it is a personalized item. I don't think it unreasonable to expect customers to place orders online particularly when Amazon is so successful at taking online orders only and do not have phone support. I just don't know how we can add a phone number but politely ask that all orders be placed online. Any thoughts?

I would definitely add a phone #. Customers call us all the time. And we sometimes just place the orders on their behalf. It's quite simple and they definitely get a comfort feeling when they talk to a real person etc....So unless you're Amazon you could probably benefit....

How do you place the orders? Do you just go through the order process on the website? Or do you hand write the orders and then input them? Just curious....

We have to hand write and re-enter into our in store POS system and of course hand type, into UPS /FedEx etc etc. So several more steps, but it can also mean an order, we do see the highest percent of orders are from the site and years ago it was the other way around,

We also are seeing way less orders from customers that may be ordering while at work?
In years past orders came in all day and most during the day, the last 4-6 months seems more are coming in at night compared to during the day???
Our guess is most of the prior ones were ordering instead of working and business owners etc have cracked down in these economic times.
So it has been very hard to guess/track what may cause sales trends?

Dave

Super interesting, we have noticed the same trend! Actually, our sales and traffic dropped by about 25-30% in the past 7 months. I can't figure it out. Yes, the economy certainly could be the culprit. We have noticed fewer orders during the weekdays and particularly on Monday's when volume used to be higher.

I guess that's why I'm scrambling a little trying to figure out how to offer more to our customers.....

Yes we go ahead and place the orders on the site live (in case the ccard doesn't go through or something), and on some repeat customers we go ahead and place the order in the backend (monster commerce admin panel) as their info is already there. Then we supply the customer with the temp password that we create for them on the checkout step 4. Some people just like to know they're being taken care of (hand-held) so to speak.
Msuz.

Older customers call us more than young customers. They always try to test us to see if we know what we sell. If they want to order over the phone we will take it (95% of our orders are by phone anyway).

The majority of our (online) orders are from M-F 10:00am-5:00pm. We have actually seen a increase in orders from 1-2 a week to 1-2 every day. We really worked on our SEO and we made our product pages a lot nicer than our competitors. We also reduced our prices by 5% and it has really paid off (are customers are manufacturers, wood industry).

Renee, If the 800 number is going to cost you more just use a regular #.

I would think in your industry there would be more people who would want to call to place their order. There are a lot of people who just don't like the impersonalization of ordering online. And some of your customers might be in the need of hearing a comforting voice if they have suffered a loss. Some may be in a mental fog (from grief) and just need to be reassured that they are choosing the right item.

Sales are way down. I am now doing what 3 people use to do. We are trying everything we can think of to drum up more business.

Renee,

At the very least use your regular number as Carol suggested. We wouldn't be able to get by without our phone lines. For taking orders/notes I was using a pen and a notebook. Now I used Google notebook.

http://www.google.com/notebook/

It takes a couple days to get used to but it is so simple (and free). And the beauty of it is when a customer calls back 2 days ...2 weeks or even 2 months later. All of the notes are dated and can be searched just like gmail. I add a label to each note when I am done. Such as "Orders", "To Do", "Done", "Calling Back", etc. You can add comments to your own notes too. There I add notes like "Called 1:27pm, Left message" or "Emailed 2/5/09 - Item out of stock".

So when John from Iowa calls back, I search John. All the notes that have John in it come up and are sorted by date. Sure beats flipping through pages full of scribbles.

We also create a different notebook for each person in the office. So if one of our employee's is out and someone left them a message we go into there notebook and post a note. "Bill called 2:00pm 242-555-1212"

I think this thread is very interesting.

The decision on whether or not to add a phone number might really depend on your customer base. If your customers are mostly over 40, they come from a time where it was commonplace to call in orders from catalogs, so they might be more comfortable with seeing a number to order from. There is also the distrust of the security of the internet with the older population.

Another thing you might consider is live chat help. I'm not sure how the costs of this would compare to an 800 number, but it's a great way to have one employee answer questions for several customers at a time, and to keep all of your orders coming in through the website.

Building customer confidence is one of the biggest hurdles to overcome with online stores. Posting a phone number does not solve this by itself, but it certainly can be used as part of the solution. Most people will NOT call. Everyone will see that you are not afraid to be available to them. This in turn will have a positive impact on your sales.

So, I would post a phone number to help improve conversion on your store. You can get a 800# pretty cheap and just forward it to your cell phone or add a 2nd line to your current cell phone plan and have the number routed there. I would not go thru your local phone company and pay the business rate.

Rob

I had an 800# for a few years and had a good plan with AT&T (1000/min @ $49.99/month). At first that covered both 800 incoming and all outgoing calls but after I moved AT&T no longer provided my local service so I lost part of the plan. I let it continue for a while but realized that a lot of my calls were from people at work or using a cell phone which has no long distance charges. I decided to stop my 800 service and change the number on my site to my local number. I've only had one person that left a message when I was on the other line that said "I've called twice and nobody answers and since you don't have an 800 number it costs me money so you've lost business". Of course I don't understand why they didn't leave a number so I could call them back but whatever.

I don't know if I've lost business by changing back to my local number but I do know that without any number listed on every page of my site I would be doing a lot less business. Some people call me just to make sure there's a live person that actually knows what's going on then they place an online order, most of them are older people of course but even still without the number I could lose business. It'd be nice to have no calls so I could do things around the house during the day, process my orders in the afternoon and be able to enjoy life but I'd do much less business. In addition the type of products you sell makes a huge difference on the impact of having a phone number for people to contact you. In my industry there are so many options, applications and different things that confuse people that without my sitting here by the phone people would likely shop elsewhere just because they didn't know what they needed for their application but with a phone I was able to help, unlike via email which can take longer and can be even more confusing sometimes.

I'd look into an 800 number Renee and check for contract terms, early termination fees, cost per call, cost monthly for the number and also check to see if any numbers are available that can be better suited to your business (ours was 866-9JMLOCK but it didn't go over too well like that). If nothing else at least have your local number on your site and be sure to have voicemail on your business line because nothing gets customers more upset than to hear a phone ring and ring and ring. (adding voicemail to my phone service has saved me countless orders) At least they can leave a message even if you are already on the phone. Most customers expect to leave a message for some industries, just be sure you call them back.

You might also check some of VOIP's if your/your ISP has decent connections.
They might offer some fair rates (800) and also solve the voice mail issues etc.

Also seems to us the 800 is better than 866 877 or whatever options as some people
dont know which ones are toll free, 800 is well know for toll free but the rest always make one wonder.

Dave

If you don't have or expect to have much call volume you may want to consider an 800# that routes to most any number that you want it to go to including your cell. These are inexpensive per month and allow you to have the "Big Business" look without breaking the bank.

Another nice feature is that you can call-in and re-route the number if you need to (say you lost your cell and want it forwarded somewhere else temporarily) and you can easily set up programming so that the 800# goes to your SOHO phone during the day Monday thru Friday and your cell or vacation getaway on the weekends. You can even tell it what time of day for which forwarding number.

We pay less than $5.00/mo which includes 60 minutes and then a few pennies after that per minute. We don't do a huge volume of 800 calls per month so this affordable solution made sense for us. Love the flexibility!

Another advantage is that I have free incoming on my cell and caller ID lets me know the number of the caller in case of a dropped call.

For more information visit AccessLine Smart 800 Service here: AccessLine Communications

And yes, you should have a contact number on your website.

Almost forgot.. You go on line & pick your own 800/866/877 # & check if available for customizing your number, and they have affordable VOIP if your always on your computer.

Renee,
You can save some money on the 800 number. You can purchase the actual number for about $65.00 and then roll it over to an existing phone line. You will pay a very small monthly fee for this (5 or 6 dollars) and then a flat .07 per minute. Here is the company that I use: Opex

My phone activity has picked up since adding the 800 number to my site. Some people just want to talk to someone before spending thier money.

Good Luck!
Marv Hineman
Boost Daddy Sales

I was told by my merchant account provider that Iwas required to have a phone number and address on my site.

Extremely interesting thread.

Renee,

You might want to also think about adding some customer testimonials to your site. That would help conversions for free. Many customers have told me they order from me specifically because of the testimonials. You could add one testimonial in a strategic place to your default product details layout so it would appear on every product details page. Or, you could get fancy and grab a free script from dynamicdrive.com to randomly rotate 10 or so testamonials, so customers would see a new one with each product they look at.

Also add some to your right column and footer.

We're talking about building customer confidence, here, and social validation (others have done it and so should I) is one of the best ways you can encourage that.

As others have mentioned, I have also noticed a decline in daytime orders, with the exception of organization items (seems people can justify shopping for productivity's sake while at work). A year ago, the peak online shopping times (according to Internet Retailer) were Tues & Thurs 10am & 2pm...now that doesn't seem to be the case...at least for us.

Also, different merchant accounts have different requirements. We use Paypal, and they require you to have a Fed EIN and valid email address for a business account, but don't require (or didn't years ago when we first signed up) a phone number and address to be on the site. Product feeds are increasingly becoming prickly about this information, though. Google Base just required that I enter much more information than before and Yahoo Product Submit requires one to be visible.

What a wealth of information....I'm going to dynamicdrive.com right now to check it out. I've wanted to add rotating testimonials for quite awhile now....I'll probably have a million questions later....

Just as I suspected....I can't figure out which script would create the scrolling testimonial for my right hand column....

Renee,

Can you post the code you are using?

I couldn't really find what I was looking for on DynamicDrive (though that is usually my go-to for easy drop-in scripts!). But I found this one on javascriptkit.com that should do nicely:

http://www.javascriptkit.com/script/script...omcontent.shtml

And...

I don't know if you actually meant "scrolling testimonial". Maybe you meant 'random' testimonial (served up randomly every time you reload the page and taken from a pool of certain content). So maybe this is just semantics, but I generally would never, ever make anything scroll on a webpage. Ever. (IMG:http://forums.networksolutions.com/style_emoticons/default/thumbsup.gif)

We've used Ringcentral for a few years.

We have a vanity 1 800 number and all calls come onto our pc (or where ever you want ie Blackberry, landline).

We only pay $8. per month and that includes fax.

I'm with you on that one. Same goes with music.