ECommerce Phone Orders vs. Online Orders
It is the battle immortal - whether to direct your
website's customers to order by phone or to order
online.
While there can be no arguing that online transactions have become more commonplace each year by an order of magnitude, for the purposes of this article, we are going to assume that the product being sold is of a cost greater than few dollars.
Selling below that price point can make processing phone orders impractical or at least inefficient.
A thread on Webmasters World recently revealed comments such as, "We get 2 or 3 phone orders for every completed Internet order. Some days it's 4 to 1". The late great copywriting legend Gary Halbert was well-known for preaching the phone order gospel.
So, what's the big deal with phone orders - isn't that WAY out-dated and old-fashioned? This is the Internet age after all..
It might help to first look at why phone orders are the preferred method of buying for many folks online.
Let's imagine an average baby-boomer+ guy for our example. Our friend checks his email at least semi-regularly and he knows how to click his way around the web and find stuff he likes. He's not particularly comfortable with the computer in general and even less so when it comes to filling out forms online, typing long messages or buying things in an unfamiliar way. He's happy to spend his money, but he likes to do it the way he likes to do it...
THAT guy will read your offer, click your buy button, start to fill out your order form, mistype a word and hit an error message or get distracted by a phone call and POOF! You just lost a sale that WOULD have been completed and in the bank if the buyer had just been directed to call pick up the phone to dial a number and give his credit card number like he's done a hundred times before.
It's how we order pizzas. It's how we order from TV or catalogs. It's hard wired into our own internal buy cycle.
Then, there's the issue of high-ticket items or even semi-ordinary items that cost more than a casual amount to spend.
These types of purchases demand even greater trust on the part of the buyer and, trust ME, a hacker-safe badge is not gonna cut it.
In the same vein, for many products, delivery options, features and function, as well as availability of high-demand items are all things that need to be verified by the buyer before he will pull the trigger. Score another point for the good old fashioned telephone.
So, if you want to increase your sales, start putting a phone number into your call to action and watch your sales multiply!
Brian McLeod is President and CEO of LoudMac Creative, Inc., a Miami-based Integrated Creative Marketing firm. Brian has more than a decade of home-run successes in Direct Response TV, direct marketing, Pay Per Click (PPC) and Search Engine Marketing (SEO-SEM). His work has generated millions of leads and over one hundred million dollars in sales!
To turbocharge your marketing efforts, contact Miami Marketing Expert Brian McLeod.
While there can be no arguing that online transactions have become more commonplace each year by an order of magnitude, for the purposes of this article, we are going to assume that the product being sold is of a cost greater than few dollars.
Selling below that price point can make processing phone orders impractical or at least inefficient.
A thread on Webmasters World recently revealed comments such as, "We get 2 or 3 phone orders for every completed Internet order. Some days it's 4 to 1". The late great copywriting legend Gary Halbert was well-known for preaching the phone order gospel.
So, what's the big deal with phone orders - isn't that WAY out-dated and old-fashioned? This is the Internet age after all..
It might help to first look at why phone orders are the preferred method of buying for many folks online.
Let's imagine an average baby-boomer+ guy for our example. Our friend checks his email at least semi-regularly and he knows how to click his way around the web and find stuff he likes. He's not particularly comfortable with the computer in general and even less so when it comes to filling out forms online, typing long messages or buying things in an unfamiliar way. He's happy to spend his money, but he likes to do it the way he likes to do it...
THAT guy will read your offer, click your buy button, start to fill out your order form, mistype a word and hit an error message or get distracted by a phone call and POOF! You just lost a sale that WOULD have been completed and in the bank if the buyer had just been directed to call pick up the phone to dial a number and give his credit card number like he's done a hundred times before.
It's how we order pizzas. It's how we order from TV or catalogs. It's hard wired into our own internal buy cycle.
Then, there's the issue of high-ticket items or even semi-ordinary items that cost more than a casual amount to spend.
These types of purchases demand even greater trust on the part of the buyer and, trust ME, a hacker-safe badge is not gonna cut it.
In the same vein, for many products, delivery options, features and function, as well as availability of high-demand items are all things that need to be verified by the buyer before he will pull the trigger. Score another point for the good old fashioned telephone.
So, if you want to increase your sales, start putting a phone number into your call to action and watch your sales multiply!
Brian McLeod is President and CEO of LoudMac Creative, Inc., a Miami-based Integrated Creative Marketing firm. Brian has more than a decade of home-run successes in Direct Response TV, direct marketing, Pay Per Click (PPC) and Search Engine Marketing (SEO-SEM). His work has generated millions of leads and over one hundred million dollars in sales!
To turbocharge your marketing efforts, contact Miami Marketing Expert Brian McLeod.