Best way to track phone orders

Any advice

[is300]

Can anyone tell me the best way to track inbound phone orders to SEO efforts?

[Warren]

A company I know, uses different telephone numbers to track inbound calls via traditional ads (yellowpages).

This could be modified by using different telephone numbers that are presented to different users via different landing pages.

[nalin]

With server side scripting method of your choice you should be able to extend any website traking to accomplish phone based tracking.

Assuming prexisting tracking sets a cookie based on referrer or tracking urls, you use the cookies value on all pages to determine the text/image to use for the phone number. For a toll free number, minimally you can look at your phone bills to gauge the traffic, although you could probably invest in telephone equipment that would do more able (real time?) reporting.

[DirigoDev]

Use sessions or cookies to dynamically display phone numbers. I have 4 clients that each have in excess of 400 phone numbers. We track Google adgroups down to the keyword level on both eCommerce orders and the phone. Beyond Ink in Portland Maine does a bunch of this sort of stuff with in the Direct Response industry. If you need examples in Cold Fusion, ASP, JavaScript, or PHP I have some code I can share with you. The kind of tracking I do takes a bunch of processing power. Think about a dedicated server if you don't already have one.

[DirigoDev]

One more thing I left out. Look into getting some POTS lines. AT&T offers a service that will email you traffic reports by phone number every day. Most call centers have switches that can do a screen pop and set the inbound number. A basic switch will do the trick. There are some new opensource switch software that looks very cool. The 4 port computer cards are not very expensive. Executone switches can be purchased used and are easily configured. If you need help, I have some folks that can help with your switch and even call center software.