One of the biggest mistakes I see on e-commerce websites is the lack of a phone number. When a user can’t find a phone number on a website, they immediately think:

• I can’t trust this website with my money
• I can’t get a quick answer to my question
• What if things go wrong, I have no way to contact them

I can say from experience that a large part of sales from an online shop’s sales will come through the phone. The exact ratio will depend on the industry, but I’ve got clients who have online ordering systems and they receive almost all of their orders over the phone. Another client gets about 50/50 calls/online sales, and my experience managing an online electronics shop was about 25% calls and 75% online orders.

I’ve found some other people on the Webmaster world forums with similar experiences. These are all quotes from the thread:

• “Toll free phone number + quality salesperson = Increased sales. Period.”
• “We convert 75% of calls into sales there and then, if we could do that with “pure web traffic” I’d be posting from somewhere far more exotic than I am now ”
• “I believe that if you are trying to convert big-ticket sales (over $500), it is necessary to post the phone number to give people that “warm, fuzzy feeling”. We take about half our orders over the phone, from people who called us and saw the number on the website. Many tell us they wouldn’t have ordered from us if they hadn’t been able to reach us by telephone first.”

I also found a blog post by Derek Gehl that shares his positive experiences of having a phone number.

Add to this the fact that still some people don’t feel comfortable ordering online, and you’ve got a compelling reason to have a phone number. In fact, if you don’t have your phone number on your store, you’re probably costing yourself a lot of money.

What if you’re not available to answer the phone all the time?

This is a really good point, after all, a lot of ecommerce shops are part time affairs, with the owners running them for a bit of extra income whilst still working full time.

This is the exact case with Clock Central – an online clock store that is looking to dominate the high quality clocks and instruments niche in Australia.

What did we do?

Well I’m a firm believer that even if you can’t take the calls, having a phone number gives visitors a reason to trust you. We set up a Skype Voicemail account, which has it’s own phone number. We created a memorable and unique answering machine message that is lively and friendly. I think this is an important – nobody wants to leave a message on your phone if you just say “Hi, this is Luke, leave a message”. Instead, we created a message that makes the customer feel like they should leave a message.

So while Clock Central can’t answer the phone during the day, they’ve got a phone number on their site (instantly increasing their conversion rate), and a great message that will allow them to follow up leads that they would otherwise have left. 

So… if you don’t already, get a phone number on your website. Even if you have to create a new phone number… it is worth it!

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