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billbenson
11-05-2008, 02:30 AM
I've seen a lot of posts here and elsewhere about the importance of contact info on a site including phone.

Lets say you have a site that sells $50 items on a shopping cart and gets 1000 visitors a day and 10 orders a day. Thats $75 per day or about $2200 per month. Certainly you could increase your orders by having good contact info. Most interested customers will have a question. Having contact info including phone numbers and you may get 50 calls requiring feedback, pricing, specs, etc per day. I've done it. I've called contact info for a $20 product.

Does Amazon, Google, etc have a contact phone. Ya, you trust them, but can you easily get in touch with them? Amazon probably has a contact number, but I bet it's a long hold time and buried on their web site. How many times have you called a phone on a site only to get 7 levels of press 1 for this and 2 for that only to get disconnected or eternal hold in the end. Every cell phone company out there does that.

So what info do you put on your site if the products are as I described above? As a sole proprietor you can't handle 50 calls a day when you make $10 per sale. You might double your sales, but you won't get any sleep.

Beyond this, you can't make a living on whatever margin you have on $75 a day. So the strategy is to have 20 web sites doing that and nurse the good ones. Then you have a nice living. But you aren't making big bucks and can't handle phone calls or emails for that matter. For one product I sell now, I could easily get 50 email questions a day not to mention the phone calls. Some days are dead as well. Much higher close rate on the phone sales.

So how do you approach this as a small web business with $50 dollar products?

Just a late night post. Tossing it out for comments.

vangogh
11-05-2008, 11:41 AM
I list several different ways to contact me and in general I'd say that's the best approach for small businesses to take. It does depend though on what you sell and how well you can handle the contact.

If you think there will be too much calls, have an email contact. Another option is to set up a support forum so you can answer similar questions once and even have other customers answer questions. You could have the forum be public or require a login that the customer receives with their order.

Keep in mind most people aren't going to contact you so you shouldn't be getting calls from everyone who orders.

If you find you are getting too many calls you could always raise prices. You'll do less volume, but you'll have increased profit per sale and reduced the number of calls you have to take.

KristineS
11-05-2008, 03:50 PM
We have products on our retail site that range from 2.15 per item to several thousand dollars per item. We provide phone, fax and e-mail contact information. Granted, this isn't a one man band, but we're a relatively small company, particularly on the administration side and everyone does double or triple duty.

If you're web site is informative and you take the time to try to think like your customers and answer the questions they might ask, you'll generally limit the calls you have to take. Some people will call no matter what, but most will like the convenience of ordering via the web. I also think multiple forms of contact information are reassuring. If you're worried about calls, let people know that e-mail is likely to get the fastest response and then make sure you respond quickly to any e-mails you do get.

SteveC
11-05-2008, 04:29 PM
As a consumer I only ever buy from websites that have their full contact details listed, I just want to know that I can call someone if it all goes wrong...

Interestingly... our main website lists our full contact details and we get enquiries from all around the work, if we remove our address the number of enquiries goes up... as people assume we are based in the US... however we close less sales, so we have found that including our address reduces the number of US enquiries however we close more of these.

billbenson
11-05-2008, 06:09 PM
Ah, but stevec, if you are using adwords, you don't have a contact phone. More than that, reversing charges is your only recourse. Not really a relevant example though.

The question really is: If you have a gift site, do you put your phone on there or at least on there in an easy to spot location, or do you build two different gift sites and hopefully make the same without having to manage phone calls.

I certainly believe you will loose sales by not having it there, but on a site selling $50 items, wouldn't you be better off not dealing with the phone calls and writing another site selling some other category of $50 items?

In my case, I sell high dollar technical items. I have no choice but to put the phone number there. As a one man show, I hate it because it traps me to a computer and phone for 9 hours a day if you include all the US time zones. Same for a web designer.

But if you were developing a site for someone like I described above, does it really make sense to put it on there?

Again, I'm just tossing this out for discussion

vangogh
11-05-2008, 06:23 PM
I guess it depends on how much you need the next person's business. I think we all agree you'll sell more products by having your contact info on the site and easy to find. If you're making enough money and would rather lose a few customers than have to answer the phone then maybe you don't offer the contact info. If it's more important to make every sale then include the contact info.

It's really just about understanding the pros and cons of including or not including specific contact information and then deciding which makes sense for your particular situation.

Spider
11-05-2008, 09:03 PM
If you are getting many calls per day, there's a good chance many are repetitive. Add answers for those questions to your FAQ - you do have a FAQ, don't you?

Consider using an offshore call center. I hear they are quite economical.

orion_joel
11-06-2008, 01:56 AM
I include all the details on my site, address, phone, fax, email, etc. Once i get the full range of products on the site the items are mostly going to be priced between $50 and $150 with 10-20% margin. Now i do doubt that i could handle a call for every sale if i was getting more then about 30 or 40 sales a day.

I think the key is including more then enough information that people don't see the need to contact. I think maybe one of the prime reasons people may contact for this sort of site is more so to verify that it is a legit company who does actually answer the phone. The other thing that i think is that if you are making only about 10 sales per day, from a web based store, and were getting anything up to 50 inquires then maybe there is something wrong in the website that is causing people to question the site rather then just make a purchase.

Amazon, does have contact details on their site, not sure about wait times or anything. I believe they also have a call back service, you enter your details and they call you.

vangogh
11-06-2008, 02:18 AM
Just to mention it again most people aren't going to call you because you list a phone number. I do the same thing as SteveC mentioned. If a site is unfamiliar to me I want to see a phone number to call before ordering. I don't plan on calling, but I want to know that I can if I need to. It adds an extra level of trust for the site feeling that you can get in touch with a real person if the need arises. But my preference will still be to order online and I'll probably even send an email first or look to a support forum or FAQ to solve my problem.

Business Attorney
11-06-2008, 12:29 PM
I agree that putting contact information on a site is a good idea. If you have good information (and a good FAQ page) the ratio of calls to sales should be low. If it isn't, then it probably means you should either reorganize your site to make it easier to find the information that is there, or put more information on the site.

I don't necessarily look for contact information before I place an order (I have never called Amazon, for example), but if I have a question and can't find either the answer on the site or a number to call, I simply move on to another seller.

vangogh
11-06-2008, 08:28 PM
With a site like Amazon I wouldn't worry about whether or not the phone number is there since I know the site well enough. It's more for the sites you're not familiar with and not sure whether or not to trust.

Even with a number most people aren't going to call. It's like offering a money back guarantee. Most people will never take you up on that, but offering it can still help close the sale. The few people who do abuse the guarantee will generally be outweighed by the extra sales.

Some people will call and abuse the phone number, but if having the number listed results in increased sales you could hire a service to take the calls and deal with most of them.