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Measure calls - measure ROI

Measure calls - measure ROI
Stolen ROI is a factor just about every web designer or online marketing professional needs to consider. I’ve written this post from the point of view of a web design, but it equally applies to a business owner looking to measure the true performance of their website.

What is Stolen ROI?
Stolen ROI could also be described as ‘return on investment’ which isn’t being apportioned to its correction origin. In essence you are not giving the website the true benefit it deserves because you are not including enquiries or sales information from all sources. For example you might only be measuring sales or enquiries made directly through the website, but not actually measuring the number of phone calls being received into a company, even though the caller got the phone number from the website.

How can I track stolen ROI?
It’s simple really, just look at ways to record points of contact with your client I.e. the methods with which your clients customers make contact with your client. This could be:

* Telephone
* Visiting a shop or showroom
* Completing a postal application / feedback form
* Text messages

In each situation you can measure how many times each of these features was used.

Use of technology:
Using technology is great, however don’t forget the basics. Nothing works better than a pen and paper. It does rely on your client recording the information correctly, but its a great starting point.

Most important – measure the number of phone calls your client receives. There are lots of ways to do this and I’ll write a separate post to explain some possible options.

For all new projects – try and measure offline KPI’s before you begin work on changing a website. This way you can see the true effect.
The True Test of Stolen ROI
What would happen if you turn your website off? What impact will it have on your business. Measure this and you have the true value how much business your website generates.

In fact, (although I don’t advocate this on a day to day basis), if you have a client who is a bad payer, doesn’t tell you how many ‘offline’ enquiries they receive, and tries to blame you for lack of results from the web, why not suggest you turn their website off and wait to see what effect it has on their business. Often those who are most secretive about their business and those who have the most to lose.