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Call Tracking - Why it Can Increase Conversions

Online, there are plenty of ways to increase conversion rates. Optimizing the layout and design of your landing page can certainly help accomplish the kinds of performance results you’re looking for, but what about catering to customers offline?

According to a comStore Study commissioned by Google, more than a half of website visitors complete their purchases offline - as much as 63%. This isn’t exactly a surprise, considering most industries outside of basic e-commerce generate the vast majority of leads and sales via the telephone.

So when it comes to landing page optimization, testing various images and forms may increase conversion rates, but such incremental improvements are not so impressive if a significant number of your customers are being ignored. This is where Call Tracking can help.

What Call Tracking is and How it Works

Call tracking involves issuing landing page visitors with a dynamic telephone number, in order to determine which marketing methods and advertisement campaigns are generating phone calls, and which are not. It’s used by marketers to improve the accuracy of their performance reporting - recognizing which ‘conversions’ are relevant to their business goals.

Using Call Tracking to Increase Conversions

Besides improving the quality of performance reporting, call tracking can also be used to increase conversion rates - or to put it another way, help to generate leads and sales that are valuable to a business.

Here are 3 of the major reasons why call tracking can help increase conversion rates:

1. Improving customer service

Perhaps the most beneficial aspect of call tracking, improving the quality of your customer service will help increase conversions. Landing page visitors don’t have much in the way of assistance; besides a few chosen lines of copy and imagery, there’s no salesperson around to answer customer queries and ensure the transaction goes along smoothly.

Including a dynamic telephone number on your landing page gives customers the option to call, if they have any further questions about your product or service. Answering these queries over the telephone can help secure a lead or sale.

2. Removes anonymity, removes concern

Similarly, the lack of human presence on a landing page can also deter visitors from completing a transaction, but for very different reasons. Potential customers need reassurance that their request/registration/purchase will be taken care of, and that sensitive information (such as their personal details and credit card numbers, etc) will be handled safely. Handing over their details to an anonymous landing page, regardless of how reputable your company may be, is just too great a risk for some.

Giving customers the option to speak directly with a representative (human presence) can alleviate these concerns and help secure a lead or sale. In other words, call tracking is an effective way of establishing trust.

Image: Example of how Call Tracking can be used in conjunction with imagery to create a human presence and establish trust (source. Clickthroo)

3. Positive intervention

Asking visitors to call your place of business as soon as they arrive at your landing page is a great way of pitching/selling to customers whilst their interest is peaked. Having gone to the trouble of performing an internet search query and then actively clicking your ad, this is the point where ‘purchasing’ is at its likeliest - and therefore the best time to interact with customers directly.

Likewise, asking visitors to get in touch right away can prevent potential leads from going cold. Just because a visitor fills out a form or completes a registration, doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll still be interested when the time comes for to contact them later on.

Let’s not forget mobile users

Mobile users (specifically smartphone users) are 63% likelier to call after making a local business search, according to a 2011 study by Google Mobile Movements - with this figure set to increase as the number of mobile devices expected to double between now and 2015.

Implementing click-to-call functionality on all mobile landing pages should already be a must for any marketer. Tracking these calls won’t necessarily add any value to the user experience, but it will certainly strengthen the quality of your performance reporting - which is crucial when marketing to such a hefty portion of your overall customer base.

It can, however, provide you with enough accurate data to help optimize your mobile output for the better, should your performance reporting suggest it. Thereby improving mobile user experiences for the future.

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Main Image, Callcap