A Toll-Free Number on a Neighbourhood Business

A number that sounds like a head office

A shop or service with one location puts its 1-800 number on the Google listing, the website header and the sign. The idea was to look established.

To someone searching nearby, it says something else. A toll-free number suggests a head office, a call centre or an answering service, somewhere other than down the road.

Toll-free numbers made sense when calling another area code cost money. Many callers now dial from mobile plans with long distance included, and a local number costs them nothing extra.

Meanwhile the local number, the one that rings in the shop, sits at the bottom of the contact page or nowhere at all.

What the listing number does

The phone number on your Google My Business listing, which also appears on your Google+ page, is one of the details Google uses to connect the listing with your business and your website.

Google's guidelines for listings ask for a number that reaches the individual location as directly as possible, and for a local number rather than a central call centre line wherever possible.

A toll-free number is not forbidden. But it is not the local number the guidelines prefer, and it matches nothing else that ties the business to its neighbourhood.

The local number does. Its area code agrees with the address, and the same number on your website and in local directories confirms that they all describe the same place.

What a caller reads into the number

• A local area code says the business is in the region.
• A toll-free number suggests a head office or an answering service.
• A number from another region makes people wonder who answers.
• The same number everywhere reassures someone comparing several businesses.
• A number in the header saves a phone visitor from searching for it.

The second is the one owners rarely expect. Someone choosing between seven businesses on the map often wants to talk to a person in the shop, and a toll-free number hints that they will not.

Consistency beyond Google

Directories, review sites, the Facebook page, Bing Places for Business and Apple Maps each carry a phone number too. They should all carry the same local one.

When some show the toll-free number and some the local, the business looks like two businesses, and the details that tie the listing to the website disagree with each other.

Go through the main ones once, write down what each shows, and correct them in one sitting. Keep the list, because the next change will need it.

Where the toll-free number belongs

The toll-free line still has a job. Customers in other provinces, out-of-town buyers and people ordering online may genuinely prefer it.

Put it on the contact page and the shipping or ordering page, labelled for callers outside the area. Both numbers can ring the same phones, so nobody misses a call.

What changes is which number leads. The local number goes on the listing and at the top of every page; the toll-free number goes where distant customers look for it.

If there is no local line

Some businesses only ever had the toll-free number, or let the local line go years ago.

A local number that rings the same phone is usually inexpensive to add through a phone provider, and it is worth having for the listing alone.

Choose one and keep it. Changing the listing's number again in a year undoes much of the consistency the change is meant to build.

A worked example

A home theatre seating store in a suburban row of furniture shops sells recliners, sectionals and tiered theatre rows, and ships some orders across Western Canada.

Years ago it bought a toll-free number for out-of-province orders and, to look bigger, put it everywhere: the sign, the website header and the Google listing.

Customers in the showroom sometimes said they had assumed it was a chain, or a warehouse that only sold online. Some had nearly phoned a competitor with a local number, because they wanted to speak to someone in the store.

The local number went on the listing, the website header, the Facebook page and the main directories. The toll-free number moved to the contact and shipping pages, labelled for customers outside the Lower Mainland.

Both still ring the same phones at the counter. Nothing about the business changed except what its number told people about where it was.

Making the change without missing calls

Change the number in Google My Business first, then the website, then the directories. Keep the toll-free line active; it is still printed on old flyers, invoices and the side of the van.

Printed material can switch as it is reprinted. There is no need to throw anything away.

Call both numbers from a mobile afterwards to check that each one rings where it should, and that the greeting names the business.

On the website itself

Put the local number at the top of every page, written as text, so visitors see it at a glance and phones can dial it with a tap.

Write it the same way everywhere, with the area code, in the same format as on the listing. A number that is only an image cannot be tapped, copied or read by search engines.

On the contact page, show both numbers with a label each: local, and toll-free from outside the area. Nobody should have to guess which one to use.

The counter-case

Some businesses really are spread out. A shop that sells mostly online across the country, or a service delivered entirely by phone, can reasonably lead with a toll-free number.

Where a business has several locations, each listing should carry the local number of that branch, not one central line shared by all of them.

But a business that customers visit, or that visits them, belongs to its neighbourhood. For it, the local number leads, and the toll-free line serves everyone else.

This week

1. Search for your business on a phone.
2. Check the number your Google listing shows.
3. Switch the listing to the local number.
4. Put the local number in the website header.
5. Label the toll-free line for out-of-area callers.
6. Correct the directories and the Facebook page.
7. Call both numbers to check where they ring.

Step four is the one every visitor sees. The number in the header is the one people tap, and it should match the listing that sent them there.

Making sure customers recognise the shop itself when they arrive is covered in an old shopfront photo in the map images.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.