If you have an offline business, the primary goal of your website is probably to attract new local customers to your door. But how do you track the effectiveness of your website?
Sure you can track the number of visitors to your website with free tools like Google Analytics and the new Google LBC Reporting Dashboard, but how do you measure which of these visitors turn into actual customers?
Enter Google Voice
Well Google is starting to open up a free new tool that can help you do this. With Google Voice you get a new local phone number that you can use to route calls to your business, cell or home numbers.
It also provides voice mail capabilities and transcribes these voice mails so you can read them in your email. And you can manage all of this from a simple web interface.
Tracking Calls From Your Website
Since all of these calls are logged, if you use this number on your website you can tell how many phone calls your website is generating for you.
Google Voice provides you with a “Call Me” Widget that you can put on your website, and if people click it and enter their phone number, the service connects you with your potential customer instantly.
I was lucky enough to get Google Voice number back when the service was called Grand Central. They’ve made a lot of improvements to the service and I’ve been using it as the primary local phone number for my business for about a year.
The service works well, and gives me a lot of flexibility in how I route my calls, check my voicemail and enable my customers to reach me from various websites that I run.
Watch the video to learn more:
Getting a Google Voice Number
How can you get a Google Voice number? Well the rumor is that they are opening up numbers in the U.S. this week. So what are you waiting for – Go put your name on the invitation request list!
You can also follow the Google Voice team on Twitter – @googlevoice for real-time updates.
Note: If you are interested in this you may also want to read my series on Virtual Phone Systems.
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{ 15 comments… read them below or add one }
It would be nice if you could take the phone number or widget ID and have call stats appear in your website analytics reports.
Lets say that you setup a directory and the person calling has to push #1 because they are a new customer. Then every month you could total up the number of new customer calls. Combine that with a “Google Form App” and you have a much more clear picture of true leads per month.
That’s an excellent idea Jeff. Google did experiment with call tracking a while ago and then stopped. Maybe down the road Google will integrate this with the Google LBC dashboard or analytics to provide some really nice metrics for small businesses.
Hi Don,
Great Review. I was fortunate in that I signed up for Grand Central as well when it was still open, so Ive been using Google Voice for a while. I did not really get the significance of it at the time, and set it up in my old home town so that my friends could call me at no cost to them. Now i want to change it to a phoenix # and cant. Hopefully they will change that.
Don,
I am very skeptical about installing anything from Google. Recently, I installed Google Chrome browser on my computer, and it “took over” everything. When I finally uninstalled it, I had to call a tech to restore my PC to normal function. I also had to uninstalled the Google toolbar because Google seems to “take over” where ever it’s installed on a PC; it slowed everything down significanly, especially loading my Firefox web browser.
Hey Don,
An excellent informative article. What is this world coming to! Mosts of our tasks that we do in a small business could be internetised within a few years. Google seems to be leading in that and its funneling its phenomenal growth.
I read your articles as regularly I can. They make more sense to me because of the lack of IT teck speeck.
This is cool technology. It would be great if it was also a fax #. Docs would show up in your inbox. And send fax also. Then everything could be handled from one place. Or even receive fax on your iphone.
Don I am a real estate agent that already has a virtual number through my company. I want to forward those (few calls because I never use the number) to Google Voice. However, in order to enter numbers you have to be able to answer that phone and enter in your code to get it connected to Google Voice. Well the virtual phone doesn’t ring anywhere. Is there any way I can get those calls routed through Google Voice?
Hi Romilda,
Why don’t you just have your Google Voice number routed to your cell phone or landline, and turn off the “call presentation” option. Then when you forward your other phones it will ring your cell phone and you can enter the code?
I am just starting a new small service business with a partner. I was about to print out postcards for advertisement when i received the long awaited and nearly forgotten about invite from Google. This changes everything. Now instead of my partners cell phone number on an ad in thousands of homes, we will have the G.V. number instead. Were setting up a professional voice-mail greeting, both our phones get rung, can setup times the phone wont ring, and have it setup so when a customer calls, our caller Id. will display our G.V. number saved as our company name on our cell’s that way we know to answer the call with a professional greeting. The best part of all, it is totally free! What perfect timing. Hopefully our business will have success, and if it does, I will credit Google.
Hi Don
I am a high school secretary. I am trying to set up Google Voice to work with the digital phone at my workplace desk. I’d like to use Google Voice for making long distance calls and to text message staff and administrators (I dont use a mobile phone). I got stuck in the Set up process: I’ve selected a Google Voice phone number, but I don’t know how to specify the phone I want to ring (my phone extension) for the calls I make. I need to use our primary school phone number, but also my own 4 digit phone extension at my desk. Can you provide some guidance?
Hi Jennifer,
I took a look around and it seems that Google voice does not support routing calls to a phone number + extension: http://www.google.com/support/voice/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=115101
Sorry!
Hi Don – thanks for looking around. I did make the suggestion to GoogleVoice to accomodate phones with extensions and will hope for something in the future:)
Hi Don, there are a couple of core issues with using Google Voice for business. One is that it’s hard to route a call to multiple people. Two is that it’s hard to get more than one call at a time. It’s for people like that that we developed Ringio.
Hi Don, I have a business in Fort Lauderdale, FL (954 area code) and want to have presence in Miami FL (305 area code). My plan was to get an UPS mail address in Miami and use Google Voice Number (305 area code) for a local number. Do you know if I create a Google Local Search account for Miami, will Google accept the 305 google voice number? Any suggestions?
Merry Christmas! John
John – yes, you’re on the right track. It’s a good idea to use an area code for the city you want your listing in. Merry Christmas to you too!
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