Affiliates with prominent 800 #'s

800 numbers and affiliates

[oliver_w]

I've been successfully working with affiliates that do not offer telephone sales, but I am considering working with a few that really push the users into calling (many have the 800# in the domain, such as 800-widget.com).

My fear is that conversion will be low, as my leads will become sales over the phones.

Has anyone had notable success with such "800-widget" vendors?

[defanjos]

I have no facts to back this up, but my feeling is you might come out ahead - this is my reasoning, if a site has an 800 number displayed, people will be more comfortable buying from that site because they think it is a "real" business, and not just a 16 year old (no offense to any 16 year old reading this) running the site out of his bedroom.

When people go online, they want to buy online and not on the phone, plus, many people shop at work and it is easier (less riskier) to do it online than to call someone.

Of course you will lose some sales to the 800 number, but maybe the increase in sales will offset it.

Like I said, I have no data to back this up, it is simply a guess.

[digitalghost]

>>Like I said, I have no data to back this up, it is simply a guess

I have quite a bit of data to back that up. People like to see a phone number, physical address, etc. I've seen conversion rates lift by more than a few percentage points after making an 800 number prominent. Add an SSL cert, a Better Business Bureau graphic, (only if you're a member) and you've taken some steps that build consumer confidence.

Some other confidence builders:

No broken graphics
No 404s
Email address that matches the domain. How do you feel when you see a Yahoo email address on an e-comm site?
No typos.
Proper Grammar.
A picture of the owner - (need to be careful with that one and it's not for all sites.

[buzzmaster]

We find that probably 85% of our customers will call before making the purchase because they want to make sure someone is there when problems crop up. They also want to make sure there's a real company there and not just a website for a guy that works it evenings and weekends.

I've had customers call and mention that none of the competitors would answer the phone or return a message. We made the sale just by returning the call.

This is the part that might help you out. We never take an order over the phone. After helping the customer and giving them the warm fuzzies we send them right back to the website to place their order. It cuts down on us having to spend lots of phone time typing addresses and such and also gives us the digital signature for credit card processing.

[TheOtherOne]

Just going from my own personal experiences... I would be more likely to buy from a site with an 800 number, however I rarely call it.

It's very important though that the number be manned properly for those that do call. One example in particular, I was ordering a digital camera from a web site and ran into a page loading problem where I wasn't sure the purchase had actually gone through so I called their 800 number to try and check. Whoever I spoke to on the phone was an absolute jerk. He kept trying to transfer me to someone else without giving me a chance to hardly get a word in and then the transfer only put me right back to the dang phone tree where I started in the first place. Anyways... I finally gave up calling after a few days of the same treatment when I realized the order never did go through (no e-mail confirmation, no credit card charge). I just went and bought the camera elsewhere... even though I had to pay a little extra.