As a seller of hard goods, my basic business model is mail order. Orders come from my catalogue order form, telephone sales, adverts and my web shopping cart. Some of my older customers write me once a year and reorder, with a personal handwritten letter.
Many people will look at my web site and then phone me to make the order. They dont trust the internet. Some of them happily fill in the form, safe in the knowledge that they are on a secure server. I doubt they give much thought to what happens to that number once it is in the secure server database. Anyone can buy a secure certificate and take credit card numbers.
Whichever way someone chooses to order, I offer to supply on a nett seven day invoice, in case they do not want to give a credit card number out. This implies a trust in your customer, I almost never get burnt by one off purchasers. I have seldom seen this offered by info product sellers. I guess they fear buyer remorse.
Cutting off a sales channel based on a theory is just daft. The more ways of purchasing you give, the more you sell.

Slightly related is who the buyer is. I also wholesale to retailers, and despite my best efforts these guys will not use the internet to order or look at product information. Even emailing product data is pointless. They want a fax, that lands on their desk or counter, even though an email would give far higher quality. I've seen the same thing happen to other retailers who try to set up online ordering for their retailers.




Weather instruments by mail order