How many phone calls do you get from your website? It’s difficult to quantify unless the person answering your phone asks every caller, “How did you find us?” It’s much easier to track leads from a website contact form. But to determine internet marketing ROI, it’s important to track inbound e-mail and phone calls.
Borrowing a commonly used tactic from Yellow Pages advertising, I recommend using a unique dedicated phone number that only appears on your website.
Website-to-phone conversion tracking isn’t new. Just do a Google search for “call tracking” and you’ll find a bunch of companies offering remote call forwarding routed through a call-tracking system. Then they’ll provide you with a monthly call-count report. Costs and features vary.
Before launching our new site, I wanted to make sure we had a way to track website-to-phone conversion. However, we were also in the process of moving our office, and there was a delay with porting our office telephone number from AT&T to our new carrier, Vonage. Since I use Skype every day for IM, I decided to try SkypeIn. For $60/year, I got a local phone number and voice mail. Skype also offers Skype Pro for $3/month and includes unlimited calls to landline or mobile phones within the U.S.A. (and a discount on SkypeIn).
For about two weeks, we forwarded our office phone line to our new SkypeIn number. That way, we wouldn’t miss a call while moving or porting. Now the SkypeIn number is only listed on our website. So website-to-phone conversion tracking is easy and affordable. Whether you choose SkypeIn or your current phone carrier, I encourage all website owners to get a unique dedicated phone number to improve website-to-phone conversion tracking.
