Is this a trend everywhere?

phone orders increasing as a percentage of sales

[Rugles]

We have noticed a trend in the last 6 months.

Phone orders are an increasing percentage of our total sales. Our internet sales continue to grow but the growth of our phone orders are outpacing the growth in internet orders.

Anyone else seeing an increase in phone orders?

[ssgumby]

We are seeing an increase in phone orders, but it isnt outpacing our growth in web orders. We have yet to hire somone to man the phones but feel in the next 3-6 months we will need an office assistant/phone support person.

[Conard]

Yes, we have seen an increase in phone orders and when we ask the customers why they are calling instead of using the shopping cart the answer is the same as it has been. I don't want to put my credit card information on the Internet.

We are also seeing a huge increase in declined credit cards in the last 60 days or so.

[LifeinAsia]

I don't want to put my credit card information on the Internet.

As if giving out that same information to an anonymous voice on the phone is any safer!

[Rugles]

Surely these people were just as afraid of putting a credit card into a website a year ago.

That really does not explain the phenomenon. Unless there is a whole lot more of these people entering the internet age.

[ssgumby]

I think in our niche it is new people who havent shopped online before. I think this because what we sale is only sold in small specialty shops ... these shops surely are closing up in these economic times so people are looking online.

[jsinger]

Early in the decade we took a lot of our internet sales over the phone. That was nice since several of our biggest online competitors didn't have toll free order taking. The average size of Internet sales coming in by phone was substantially larger than those arriving by cart. OTOH, phone orders are very time consuming.

Callers often cited security and the desire to see if we actually had something in stock.

We're taking ever-fewer phone orders as a percentage of total orders. Customers have become comfortable with our cart. Indeed, many who call with questions later place the actual order online which gives them a record of the transaction.

So, I'm seeing a gradual *decrease* in telephone orders.

[mattb]

Possibly with the huge cc thefts at TJ Maxx and now Heartland Payment Systems some customers are more wary of placing their orders online.

We aren't seeing any large moves away from online recently ourselves. The overall trend has been more online vs. phone over the last 7 years. We've also enhanced our site over the last 7 years added more functionality and stock information.

[jwolthuis]

We are also seeing a huge increase in declined credit cards in the last 60 days or so.

We are seeing the same thing over the last 6 months; at least 3X what we've previously experienced over the same period in past years. They aren't what I'd call fraudulent attempts, but appear to be legit orders that are declined for reasons such as AVS typo mismatch that used to be approved.

Just seems to be a general tightening of fraud filters.

[D_Blackwell]

We have our phone number and email at the top of almost every page of every ecommerce site we run. We dread a spike in phone orders, because of the potential labor hit. But no, we run about 5% phone orders and have seen no spike at all. About half of phone orders don't want to provide CC data online and about half have a question(s) about the product(s). Of course, we note every question and determine if text adjustments need to be made. For this reason we also get very few emails.

We do have very prominent links on most product pages that take the user to a very detailed page of shipping policies, security policies, and such. We'd like to think that our design is confidence building in a 'background psychological' kind of way. That's the goal anyway.

[Wlauzon]

We are seeing a mix. Previous customers, including those that used to phone in orders, are now ordering more online.

But we are also seeing more phone calls - and I think that a large part of that is to verify that we are a "real" company.

[Rugles]

So its a mixed bag of answers. Some are seeing an increase and others are seeing a decline.

We have taken every measure possible to close the sale online and reduce phone traffic. Including the measures that D_Blackwell mentioned. But we still have 2 to 3 phone orders per completed internet order. It must be that our products trigger questions and we do not have a widely known company.

[LifeinAsia]

Surely these people were just as afraid of putting a credit card into a website a year ago.

I wonder how many of these people are calling from a cell phone (or worse- a cordless phone!) to give out their credit card information because they are afraid of it being stolen through the Internet.

[Rugles]

Or they give their credit card to a waiter at a restaurant, who takes the card and disappears into another room for 5 minutes.

[D_Blackwell]

I wonder how many of these people are calling from a cell phone

With a wired line obsolete for millions of people who have zero use one, that number has to be very high. I downgraded my wired phone service simply to get DSL access at one point. Didn't even have the phone, just the 'official' line that the DSL came in on. Now I have 16MB cable. (Overpriced, and I would dump them if I could. I hate my cable company.)

.......................

As mentioned, we get a very low percentage of phone calls on our ecommerce sites, but it is safe generalization that people who call are much more gun-shy about providing an email (to which we send an itemized Receipt and Delivery Confirmation number) than they are about the CC. Online, the email is required. They can provide a bogus email of course. People don't even pretend. It's a flick of the wrist [e-mail] - fine. If there is a problem it will be harder on you than me.

[pbradish]

For us, it depends on the website and how it's marketed. The phone orders that do roll in tend to be from magazine ads and other offline marketing.

[ssgumby]

D_Blackwell ... your point about email kind of made a light go off in my head. We do notice that a large percentage of the people who call will not give us an email.

[T_Miller]

Our widgets tend to be customized/personalized so we get a lot of phone calls as people have questions/concerns. Our policy is if we can close them over the phone, we do. If the fish jumps in the boat, we don't throw them back hoping they'll bite the bait on the line. LOL

Our phone sales have been growing at the same pace of website sales for years, but we recently added a couple new FAQs and rearranged the menu structure and it seems to be going down somewhat. As are abandoned carts, so I guess it was a good move...