For quite some time, the field of online commerce has been a tough sell for executives and managers because it has so many levels of uncertainty. Despite being based around a technical framework, websites don’t have an easy way of quantifying where conversions came from, and it is easy to underestimate the value of website traffic if visitors choose to make their purchases over the phone. Even if the site is the primary channel for attracting new visitors, it can be difficult to see which campaign, initiative, or search engine brought in the best leads.

There are a few ways to find out if a web visit resulted in a phone call, and even to distill that information into segments which specify the campaigns and offline ad initiatives that resulted in a sale. Here are a few popular methods for finding out is your marketing campaign is creating sales dollars for your company.

• Get a trackable phone number. Our parent company, Web.com, makes it possible to design a site with a custom phone number. You can monitor how many people call, how long the calls are, and even if the call resulted in a sale. By having a phone number that is different from your main business line, and exclusive to your website or a particular campaign, you can get a quick read on how well a campaign is going. From a pay-per-click standpoint, you can have multiple 800 numbers, each of which is assigned to a different initiative. By using phone tracking software, you can integrate your phone and order/CRM system to see where the calls are coming from.
• Set up different website addresses. If you pay close enough attention to infomercials or direct response ads on TV, you may notice that the website address on the screen is different even though the rest of the commercial is exactly the same. The phone number is usually different, and the announcer will say to “call the number on your screen.” We once had the opportunity to ask a direct response advertising company about this tactic, and they told us that different TV channels and networks got different versions of the same commercial. As a result, they were able to track sales results based on viewership, and they were even able to determine whether viewers on a certain channel would be more likely to call or to go online. Naturally, you can extrapolate this practice into different online ad channels, so content ads may land on a different site (or part of a site) than search ads, and you can even segment Google, Yahoo, and Bing ads to different pages for more study.
• Offer a special coupon code. If you have a coupon code in your paid ad, people will still use it when they call in. Any phone call that applies the code can be used to see how well the ad worked. Naturally, you will want to adjust your pricing to compensate for the code, or change the offer to include a free item of nominal value instead of a discount.
• Ask. This is the least accurate way of finding out how your sales came in, but it is still a good business practice. It is inaccurate because some people may visit your site, bookmark it, and come back weeks later. Additionally, your employees may not always ask “how did you find us” when they are taking orders, especially if there are better incentives for unassisted sales. Though the accuracy is suspect, the value in asking often helps you learn about other ways people are hearing about your business.

The value of having phone support for a website cannot be underestimated. In fact, many businesses will only run paid online advertising when their call centers are staffed, because the conversion rate is that much higher. An unusual paradox in the online world is that people won’t trust 256 bit encryption in a secure online shopping cart, but they will read out their credit card number to a complete stranger over the phone. In many cases, people will also need a single question answered (like “is it in stock?”) before completing their orders, so even though you may not be able to track that particular call as a conversion, your bottom line has improved as a result. Even though phone support for an ecommerce business takes a lot of setup and monitoring, the value of a well integrated phone and online ordering system can give you precise intelligence about which ad campaigns are working.