Order tracking without shopping carts

How to get more exact ROI for companies that phone in cc's,

[Quarfelburg]

Hi, I am doing a site for a client that sells high end furniture. The price tags are quite bulky, so the idea of a shopping cart is somewhat silly.

That said, I would like to be able to track my ROI on PPC campaigns. Does anyone have some lateral ideas on doing this? Tracking emails and doing manual sale inclusions is of course possible, but it doesn't help with people that simply phone in.

Also, has anyone ever encountered a system that allows this?

Thanks for your time,
Hayden

[jatar_k]

For clients that have both online and offline advertising I have always recommended having 2 different phone numbers. One for web only and one for everything else.

Meaning that anyone phoning on the web number can be entered as a web referral when the call is answered. Though that doesn't help you figure out exactly how they found the number.

I use sessions or cookies to track referrals through to order forms for the pure online data.

[Quarfelburg]

Agreed, they do have an 800 number simply for the web. It is however difficult for them to ask each and every customer for a referral.

I suppose one possibility is to remove the phone number from the site and have only an email address. Sacrificing usability for tracking...

Thanks for the response!

[jatar_k]

I think you have to have both options if possible. I would think the majority would send email but when you are talking bigger ticket items people may need the assurance of a live person on the other end.

Some people just like to phone, instant retrieval of information. Since the most important thing is to make it as easy as possible for people to buy you may just have to accept the fact that you cant figure out where these people came from.

You could always use the site based percentages and extrapolate for the call ins.

Do you have a contact form or just an email address?

[Quarfelburg]

Currently just an email address - I don't like contact forms. It shouldn't be a problem just attaching some code to each email link though.

I suppose another possibility would be to have a contact us page on the footer and remove all other occurences of the phone number. That would give me a slightly more accurate image. I could also track the region specific info of each visitor by state (not sure how well my ip db tracks states, but it does great for country) and that should also help tracking (on the contact page I could specify several different forwarding phone numbers based on geographical location, but I imagine the costs would be too high to be of worth).

Oh well, I'm beginning to get ideas =)

[werty]

What about a follow up survey after a sale? Either it could be sent via email or sent with the order. If it is sent with the order, make sure the postage is pre-paid. Also, if you set it up properly you could do a BRM (business reply mail) and save big time on postage.

Other ways to get people to fill these surveys out is to offer a prize, weekly/monthly drawing, 10% off your next order etc.

Not exactly, what you had in mind but it may help.

"I suppose another possibility would be to have a contact us page on the footer and remove all other occurrences of the phone number."

If you do this, I would worry about the visibility factors well as how many users would actually figure out how to find the number.

[dkubb]

Why don't you tell the customer's to call in with a promo code to get the preferred customer price, or a special bonus? People will be much more likely to remember the promo code if they know they are going to get something extra.

Another option is that you could tell people to call in and ask for operator 1234 -- which is actually the promo code merged into the phone number on the web page.

If you recieve alot of mail-in orders, and you own the building that is recieving the mail, you can ask people to mail "123 Anystreet, Suite 1234". The key is the suite is actually the promo code. (don't worry the post-office will route the mail correctly, as long as there are no other suites at this address). Again this can be merged into the web page dynamically. This works fantastically if you have fax or mail order forms you ask people to print out. Most people don't analyze the company address and you can usually sneak in a numeric promo code without anyone noticing.

I've seen all of these techniques used successfully by companies trying to track the effectiveness of their online advertising through phone, mail and fax orders.

[Quarfelburg]

We have an 800 number exclusively from the web site so we know where they are coming from. It would be good to be able to know the IP that resulted in the phone call however.