Foneshop.com – 'The online phone shop you can talk to'

Foneshop.com is one of the UK's leading online retailers of mobile phones and accessories. Established in 2003, Foneshop.com represents the online, consumer direct branch of Excalibur Distribution, a commercial mobile communications supplier. With exceptional emphasis on customer support and service levels, Foneshop.com are proud to be known as 'the online phone shop you can talk to'. They overcome the impersonal element of online shopping by providing full phone support to existing and potential customers. This, combined with competitive pricing, 99p delivery rates and one of the largest product ranges available in the UK today, has seen Foneshop.com go from strength to strength since their inception in 2003.

 

The Early Challenges

"When we started the website we were very new to the online business, we didn't really understand it", comments David Hyett, Group Marketing Director, Excalibur Communications. He adds that they were "scraping in…10 orders a day".

 

Foneshop.com initially sold contract phones, before identifying in 2004 non-contract phones and accessories as being the market niche in which they wished to excel. From then on, their aims were threefold as Hyett explains: "The idea was always to be the online phone shop you can talk to…the second thing was to home in on the accessory market…and the biggest barrier for us was to try and get over 100 orders per day".

 

Getting Results with Google

Working with AdWords, Google's targeted online advertising program, has assisted Foneshop.com in meeting and exceeding their goals. "In terms of training…we now understand how the online market works through AdWords", states Hyett. "We're doing at least 150 [orders] a day now" and "have three people manning the phones".

 

Hyett estimates that 50 percent of all customers find Foneshop.com through Google, and as a result the company invest 60 percent of their total monthly advertising budget in AdWords. He also notes that in a twelve month period, from November 2005 to November 2006, the number of orders received by Foneshop.com rose by 56 percent, the average value of each order increased by 54 percent and their conversion costs were lowered by 29 percent. "Higher conversion rates and higher return on investment… that's what [Google AdWords] facilitated".

 

Looking towards future plans to further grow and develop Foneshop.com, Hyett states that as far as use of Google AdWords goes he "can't ever see that stopping".