p5gal5 - 3:59 pm on Mar 26, 2007 (gmt 0)

I'm going to have to agree with Oliver H. on this one. On our sites, we allow people to create/preview/place orders for custom widgets (with infinite customization options) online. As this market is reasonably competitive (so our prices must be good and our website must user-friendly), depending on the product, we don't always have the high margins to allow for phone orders all day.

Our current online-to-phone order ratio is around 50:1, and if we could increase it to 75:1 or 100:1, all the better. We allow for order-placing online, but the calling-in of credit card numbers (AFTER the order has been placed into the system and the widget has been customized online), and this has helped a great deal.

Another great way to deter phone orders is to ask "Were you having difficulties placing the order online?" This gives us 1. the opportunity to find out if the enduser is having problems with the website (or if there is an area we can better clarify) and 2. the opportunity to passively mention that orders CAN be placed online.