Telephone lead tracking boosts sales for retailers

Category: Data and analytics
Research has revealed that retailers who use call tracking technology greatly improve their online conversion rates. In an increasingly online world, consumers still like having the option of calling a business. According to a consumer survey, 77% of online shoppers still expect to be able to talk to a brand representative, and 52% said if they couldn’t call someone it affected their decision to complete a transaction.

Retailers need to know the real value of these calls and the only way to that is with call tracking – software that can trace calls from the marketing source, right the way through to the point of sale.

Here are five key problems that call tracking can solve for online retailers.

Shopping cart abandonment mysteries

Before making a purchasing decision, people still want to talk to a person, especially for higher priced items. Your website’s analytics can show you cart abandonment rates, but it doesn’t necessarily tell you the whole story.

If you’re losing too many leads at the last hurdle, you need to know why.

According to a 2009 survey by IMShopping, inadequate live support has caused 82% of shoppers to abandon their carts in search of a competitor who offers telephone support. But, with a call tracking solution, you can find out exactly where in the conversion path someone abandoned their cart and trigger a response to help bring dwindling leads back into the sales path.

Losing the highest quality leads

A strong online presence and a brilliant website is one thing, but your revenues could suffer drastically if you neglect the impact that telephone calls have on your sales.

Poor quality telephone support could be destroying your conversions more than you’re aware. According to a Kelsey report, 65% of companies say that incoming telephone calls are consistently their highest quality leads. So if you’re not providing telephone assistance, or measuring the quality of these inbound leads, you’re likely to be sabotaging potential sales.

Left behind by mobile shoppers

More and more consumers are using mobile devices and tablets to do their shopping, and can call the retailer at the touch of a button. Mobile marketing should be at the forefront of your strategy. Mobile users are 52% more likely to call a business from a mobile ad. To market to them effectively you not only need to know the phone number, but the product they were interested in, where they called from and how they found you.

Lack of data

Despite being one of the sectors that spends the most on multi-channel advertising and marketing, retailers suffer from a significant lack of ROI and lead attribution data.

As with any business, failing to correctly attribute leads and sales back to the marketing source can drastically skew your sales figures and cause you to haemorrhage your marketing budget.

Website visitor level call tracking allows marketers to track visitors from their entrance to your website – attributing a marketing source to the lead – then find out which pages they’ve viewed until they call you – and what they do after the call.

We worked with a group of luxury retailers to help them streamline their marketing attribution and reduce their marketing spend. Since discovering this crucial information, they’ve been able to adjust their strategy accordingly – and their sales have dramatically improved as a result.

Inadequate knowledge of buying habits

Through our research with these online retailers, we found that those who called the online store viewed up to six times more web pages before a call. When the call ended, they converted very quickly, suggesting how important the call is in easing the consumer through to purchase. Without tracking these calls, the retailers would have had no idea about how important the phone is in securing online sales.

In addition, through tracking their calls, these retailers were able to determine which were their high value days. They found that up to 60% of callers who go on to purchase online, call on either a Thursday or Friday

We were able to find out when their prospects were browsing the website, which days they were most likely to make a purchase and which of their phone callers went on to buy something. It’s this 360 degree perspective that gives online retailers the edge over online sellers because they can use this vital data to optimise their conversion path.

About the author - Natalia Selby

Marketing Executive at Mediahawk, with 20 years experience in analytics and content management.