Traffic to your business’s website is great — but if you can turn that traffic into a referral stream for inbound calls, that’s even better. Research shows that customers who make phone calls offer much more value to a business. In fact, six out of 10 prospects report wanting to jump straight to pricing discussions on their first call, according to HubSpot.
A well-designed business website can help you harness that value, especially when it’s been optimized to support call tracking software. With a call tracking solution in place, you can gather valuable data and insights that improve your marketing strategy and drive even more ROI from phone calls.
To maximize this value, though, your website may require some cosmetic changes — as well as some small script modifications to support call tracking without compromising SEO.
Here are some steps you can take to optimize your website’s call tracking strategy.
1. Display your business’s phone number on your homepage
Many businesses include their phone number on their website’s contact page. But this only makes it harder for customers to call you directly. Given that phone call conversion rates are roughly 10 times better than those of website clicks, per HubSpot, your business should be eager to drive as many calls as possible.
You can count on customers to have a short fuse if they struggle to find basic contact information on your website. Remember: The goal of your website is to advance prospective customers further down the sales funnel.
Even though a contact page is a logical location to place your phone number, it also makes sense to feature your phone number prominently on the front page. The easier this information is to find, the more calls you can expect to receive over time.
2. Feature click-to-call on your mobile website
Placing a phone number on your business’s homepage is a great first step. Take this optimization a step further by enabling easy mobile calls through a click-to-call button. This saves customers the frustrating step of having to write your number down or go back and forth between their mobile browser and their phone call app.
A click-to-call button also improves your call tracking capabilities by keeping the website visit and phone call within a single session. Call tracking software’s attribution capabilities can connect phone calls to activity and engagements from a prior website session, but a click-to-call button connects the dots with ease.
It also encourages a quick action that is more likely to lead to a conversion.
3. Conduct A/B testing to optimize placement and display of your business phone number
Like any element on your business’s website, the placement and appearance of your business phone number will require a little trial and error to figure out what works best.
The visibility, design, font, and location on the page, along with other aspects of a phone number’s placement, can all impact how easily your audience can find it — and that will directly impact the volume of calls being logged by your call tracking software.
A/B testing can be executed in a few different ways. One option, especially for homepage phone numbers, is to change a single element of the phone number’s placement for a set period of time. For example, test the phone number at the bottom of the page one month, and then move it to the top for the second month.
Compare the performance results to determine which location is more successful. You can continue A/B testing all types of elements: button color, shape, call-to-action language, the contrast of the background color with the text, and any other aspect of the presentation.
On landing pages, it’s a little easier: You can create two versions of the same landing page, isolating a single element of your phone number’s appearance and testing it across the two landing pages — both of which should be used equally in a given campaign.
Once you have enough traffic hitting these landing pages, you might be able to identify a difference in performance that can likely be attributed to your phone number’s appearance on the page.
4. Use dynamic number insertion when featuring multiple phone numbers on your website
Many businesses like to assign custom phone numbers to specific landing pages targeted to a consumer group or a marketing campaign. This is done primarily for attribution purposes: The number can then be routed to an appropriate point of contact, and the customer’s use of that number instantly identifies the landing page and marketing campaign that prompted the inbound call to the business.
But some businesses worry that using many different phone numbers on their website might cause problems for SEO. Although it’s true that multiple numbers could cause confusion for Google, leading to SEO issues, there’s an easy fix.
Dynamic number insertion uses JavaScript to render a phone number that is visible to your website traffic, but unseen by the search bots crawling your site. This allows you to feature as many phone numbers as you want on your website, without any negative impact on your SEO.
Better yet, DNI is easy to set up on any website. A call tracking solution can help you implement this function with just a little bit of code added to each webpage. Then, you can use the software to track performance and manage attribution for your marketing campaigns.
5. Use structured data to improve phone number visibility
If you’ve already optimized your Google My Business listing with your current business phone number, you’ve taken a major step forward in maximizing your search-referred phone call volume. But by adding structured data to your business’s website, you can push that visibility even further.
Your brand can use structured data to automatically display general information in its Knowledge Graph content in Google results. In cases where a relevant online search calls up your company’s Knowledge Graph box, online users will see basic information about your company, such as its location, when it was founded, and even your phone number.
In order to make this happen, you’ll need to include your business phone number in the structured data on your website. This is a somewhat technical process that should be handled by your IT staff, but it can create another way for search to increase inbound call volume, which increases the value of your call tracking activities.
6. Use phone calls as a call to action in blog content
In blog articles and other website content, most CTAs are built around clicking on a link, downloading an e-book, or visiting the company’s contact page to take the next step in the business relationship. In some cases, though, your business could benefit from suggesting a phone call directly to your sales team or business office — as long as you craft the CTA the right way.
For starters, choose phone call CTAs for content that aligns with the value of calling your business directly. If you’re discussing the importance of a trusting business relationship, for example, a phone call CTA lends itself naturally to this selling point.
Similarly, if you’re breaking down complex software or services that can seem overwhelming to unfamiliar consumers, a phone call may be a great outlet for them to connect with a human and get their questions answered.
When it comes to the actual placement of your phone call CTA, make sure you have click-to-call functionality in place — especially on the mobile version of your site. This makes it easy for customers to quickly go from reading your content to contacting your business, all without leaving your webpage.
Conclusion
When your website is aligned with your call tracking software, your business benefits from increased phone call volume, better performance insights, and more accurate ROI calculations for your marketing campaigns.
If you’re interested in call tracking or already using call tracking software, take immediate steps to optimize your website for better results. Looking for other ways to create a competitive advantage for your business? Find out how to track calls through clicks and earn better results for your clients.
The post 6 Ways to optimize your website to get more phone calls appeared first on CallRail.