Online sales verses phone sales

We've recently put up a site for a new client, and one that spends a ton getting people to their site. They do tons of sales... on the phone. About 80% of their phone-in orders use the website as their source of call.

Now I know we've only had them up for less than a week, but we had really expected a higher number of online sales from this client. We spent months and quite a bit in resources developing their new site (PR6 btw -- couldn't believe how fast Google re-indexed all the 301's). Everyone raves how nice the site is, how easy it is to navigate, etc, etc. Yet we've got smaller clients (one that spends zero in online advertising -- and all of them in the same industry) selling like crazy while these guys have done exactly one sale all week. They're doing 3x the traffic of our next biggest client.

This client also just sent out a huge (100k+) annual mailing, so the next few days are going to be a bit crazy, but I'm worried about the online conversions. We've spent the money in usability studies. We've made the check-out process very streamlined and easy to follow (this client doesn't even require credit cards online and the check-out process is secure). We've done everything we do with all our clients and our other clients do a bang-up job on the web.

Yet people are still calling their office to do the buying...

Their office is closed today (Thanksgiving) so we got to put a banner up on the front page saying the office is closed, but remember you can buy online securely and without a credit card. If that works well, we're going to try and push them into letting us keep it on the front page in some manner.

Does anyone have any tips or wording we could use? The client is pretty open to suggestions, and they have an advertising budget second to none. We've considered giving away something in the $3-5k range (their average sale) when you buy online, but are still researching the legalities of that.

How about giveaways? Anyone know of any great gifts in the $10-15 range?

Thanks!

Do you mean $3,000-$5,000 US? I'll bet that is why people are calling by phone. I sell items in the $5-$150 range and lots of the people buying the higher end stuff want to talk about it before they buy. You might call your credit card processor to see if there is powerful filtering for purchases that size.

If the site is easy to navigate and the check out is easy then you might be deficient in content. Folks have lots of unanswered questions about the product so they don't buy online. You might get some feel for this by taking the calls from customers yourself.

Aye -- however, we have 5 other clients in this industry and they all do tons of sales online. Most of the people are repeat buyers (once a year) and have dealt with this company before. Also, we don't require the full amount up front on a credit card, and the user doesn't even have to use a credit card with this client -- they can pay by check via USPS and just use the website to save their purchase from being bought by someone else.


Each item has anywhere from 15-50 photos and 500-1000 words. We go into great detail on each and every item (with this client, there are about 700 of them) for sale. None of our other clients go to this length, yet all are doing significantly better online. One of the other clients has a details page that is almost identical to this client, and they do lots of sales online -- so we're pretty sure it's not presentation.

We also have about 100k words that we've hired a professional writer to do recently -- as we just took over their website, we didn't want to put all this content up at once, so we're going to add it bit by bit over the next six months.

I'll send you a link so you can see where I'm coming from.

And thanks for the reply!

S

Do you think you might be putting some customers off with too much detail?

Some people like to see all the blurb but one thing I like to see when I'm shopping on the internet is a comparison chart of say 10 or 20 most important factors - select three products to compare sort of thing.

Sifting through pages of copy will blur people's thoughts. Make it snappy and point out key features up top. Leave the rest of the blurb at the bottom for the geeky types - that sometimes includes me!

Also, you know those sites that sell SEO software or get rich quick ebooks etc - some people may associate excessively large copy with scammers which won't benefit you much.

We do that actually -- you never have to go below the fold to see the vitals. If you go below the fold, you're presented with all the technical aspects, so to speak.


Most of the visitors to the website are calling in, and the calls are short (they know all their information from the website and are ready to buy). It's not a matter of trust, as most people have heard of this company before they go to the website (I'm betting probably 20% here have stumbled across them at some point in the last couple of years).

S

PM me the url and I'll tell you my impressions...

First: You have a very nice site with a professional look/feel.
Second: I have tried to remain as generic in my analysis as possible because I'm not sure how much you want disclosed.
Third: I'm posting this publicly because it could help someone think about their site from a useability viewpoint.

Let me know if there is anything you feel uncomfortable with in this post and I'll edit it.

--

I actually have some experience with this type of site...as a consumer that is. In almost every case I prefer to conduct transactions online instead of over the phone. Except when I'm dealing with a site in this industry, UNLESS...they do a very good job of giving me warm fuzzies like I get when I call.

The reason for this is because (and I've had this happen) sometimes the people that manage this business sector don't do well with technology. Therefore, I may not get what I ordered or the timing may be off through no fault of my own, if you catch my drift.

With that said, here is my knee jerk reaction as someone that has visited this type of site before:

1. Upon site entry I saw your special and clicked in.
2. Next I chose one of the items at random in the resulting list.
3. I thought, hmm, nice picture and started reading.
4. I found the text fairly compelling, and quite informative.
5. I enjoyed the pictures on the right because it gave me a very good idea of what I was going to get.
6. I then looked at the rates/schedules.
7. I then wanted to act, however, all I saw was a very nice FULL listing of phone numbers and email addresses.
8. Where was the link? I looked first to the right and next to the left and then scanned the bottom again. There's the phone number right there. Guess I'll call.

However, because I KNEW that there was a link SOMEWHERE, I scrolled back up scanning everything. I found it at the top right hand portion of the screen.

In my opinion, without getting too specific, each of the weekly/daily areas (at the bottom) displays a nice set of dates. Add a "book it!" button, text link, or something next to, under each one, or at the very least turn each text sentence into a link taking the user to a calendar that only shows the range as outlined for each item. Lastly, at the very bottom of the page, create a box similar to the box you have in the top right. Better yet, repeat the box in the top right exactly, replacing the dates with form fields, maybe even adding more information since you'll have room. Perhaps you might also want to consider moving the phone numbers someplace else where they are still visible but less conspicuous.

If I've indicated my time frame (range) and click on the link in either of the boxes (top right or the new one on the bottom) just show me the dates that I'm interested in as well as the month before and the month after the range. If I've clicked on a button next to a range, then let me see all the months in that range overriding any cookies I might have set.

The calendar months that you are showing really aren't that big of a deal. I personally prefer less clutter that is all and something like I've outlined above instills confidence because it makes me think that the system is a smart system (and that someone is actually looking at it). The main point here is: I should be able to click on some kind of link at logical decision making locations without scrolling.

I'll go through it some more later, but in my opinion, the trouble is right there in what I wrote above. Don't get me wrong either, I really like what you've done with the box at the top. Also, now that I know where it is, it seems to practically jump out at me. The fact remains that the first two times I clicked into a listing, I saw no where obvious to do anything online.

P.S. Once I've made a decision, is there anyway to speed up and ubiquitize the redirect that you perform. It seems a little clunky.

P.P.S. Egol, yes I know that "ubiquitize" isn't a real word...;)

If this doesn't help you, you got what you payed for. If it does, you owe me a couple of links! 8)

Well, Gr8ted3s gave you a lot of valuable feedback but also consider this:


Customers get trained how to shop. Even if you are getting good traffic it sounds like alot of your customers are repeat customers. Have those repeat customers been taught to call on the phone to place their orders? It sounds like they have.

Start by offering your exsiting customers a benefit to shop online. Give it some time and fix what Gr8ted3s said about the phone numbers and buy button.

Boy that is very great assistance- as it applies to making a site EFFECTIVE. To requote:

1. I then wanted to act, however, all I saw was a very nice FULL listing of phone numbers and email addresses.
2. Where was the link? I looked first to the right and next to the left and then scanned the bottom again. There's the phone number right there. Guess I'll call.

However, because I KNEW that there was a link SOMEWHERE, I scrolled back up scanning everything. I found it at the top right hand portion of the screen.

I've been thinking that I've made my site clunky and gotten away from the call to action. Our gross conversions have been up...our traffic has been up by much more...our conversion rate is down. But I'm aware that our CALL TO ACTION opportunities for a sale have diminished relative to the volume of content on the site.

When I recently spoke with a competitor about a lot of items I was stunned with regard to the following (while my site is significantly better ranked in serps and has lots more traffic...his site has roughly the same number of conversions. I've become focused on making the conversion process easier before but this thread...and this explanation sure convinced me.

Great analysis, Gr8ted...your comments are definintely helpful in a general way.

Dave

Why don't consider a live chat program like liveperson?

Customer allow to purchase via the live chat securely
work just like the phone, maybe better.

I don't offer online purchase right now, the site just work
like a catalog. Because our products(waterfall pictures, led pictures)
are very heavy and easy to broke. We can't ship it by ups, fedex or
usps. We need to ship them by pallet.

But in the near future, i will educate my customer to buy online.
by offer some promotion like web buck. buy $50 give them $1.

Can you pm the url? So that i can give you better idea.

earlpearl: Thanks for the kind words and may your online conversions triple


Very good point!

>> Customers get trained how to shop. <<

This is actually one of the things we've been trying to train our clients. It's been working, to some extent, but this is an old business, and one not used to changing very often.

However, an update is in order. Sales are up. Way up. We've broken one day sales records for a single client 5 days in the last week alone. We made some changes based off some of the feedback from both egol and grated, and have some more really cool ideas that should be up in a couple of days. Some of the changes we have to impliment slowly, just to keep the client from having a heart-attack, but overall, things are going very well.

What's been surprising me is that people have been buying during the daytime hours. At first, we were only seeing night buys and weekend buys (even though the office is open Saturday and Sunday). But then, people started buying at 9 or 10am eastern and just keep buying right up till 11pm or so.

Thanks again for the feedback guys -- much appreciated on my end, and looks like on others as well!

Thanks for responding lovethecoast. I was grabbed by gr8ted comments but went back and read EGOL's comments after your post.

Very true. Price points are a critical issue. The higher the price the more important is customer interaction. Our business is old (predates the web) and our "sale" is about $600, which for many of our customers is expensive.

When we first started getting web visits and sales we were elated that people were viewing the web site and never bothering to call and speak with us. We reacted by getting lazy on the phone. When we interact well on the phone our conversions go up...when we don't our conversions (sales) go down.

In the meantime, after first viewing this thread...and reviewing our site versus those of some competitors, I refocused on our "call to action" placement. Which is less than ideal. We are starting to attack that now.

Very valuable thread.

Dave