How to Track Mobile Click to Calls in Google Analytics

 

how to track mobile click to call in googel analytics

The tracking and association of telephone calls to digital activities has been a troublesome hurdle to overcome in the past. Thankfully, these days there are a number of services to help you understand the impact your online presence has on how often your phone rings. But what if you haven’t got the budget for this?

Today I want to share a simpler solution for how to track mobile or smartphone click-to-call actions in Google Analytics. N.B: this won’t give you the granularity or insights into desktop traffic (beyond voip/skype calls); but it will help tell you how many people found you online and called you whilst on the go. It will also make your website that little bit more mobile-friendly in the process; which can’t be bad if this is true, right?

Introducing Tel: Links

With the explosion of iPhone, Android and other smartphones over the years you might be forgiven for thinking that HTML5 has evolved to cater for these new types of device. Truth is, schemes such as tel: and callto: have been around for ages and was proposed by The Internet Society back in 2004.

Similar to mailto: scheme used to link to email addresses; a tel: reference can be used to link to a telephone number and allow mobile/smartphone users to click-to-call.The result: Phone number links!

Tel: Scheme Markup Example

A basic tel: link looks something like this:

<a href="tel:01206715555">Call us on 01206 71 55 55</a>

Tracking Mobile Click-To-Call in GA

With a mobile-friendly link now in place, it’s simply a case of adding an onclick event to trigger and track the event in Google Analytics once clicked.

<a href="tel:01206715555" onclick="_gaq.push(['/', '/', '/'])">Call us on 01206 71 55 55</a>

Or, if you have multiple numbers on-page or site you may want to expand this to understand the exact link the user is clicking on - highest performing pages/widgets.

<a href="tel:01206715555" onclick="_gaq.push(['/', '/', '/', '/'])">Call us on 01206 71 55 55</a>

<a href="tel:01206715555" onclick="_gaq.push(['/', '/', '/', '/'])">Call us on 01206 71 55 55</a>

To find out more about Event Tracking, click here for ga.js implementations or here for analytics.js

How to test the tracking is working

Want to make sure the event is working? Load up Google Analytics and navigate to: Real-Time > Events

Check your new event is working by logging into GA and navigating to: Real-Time > Events

Additional Tip: How to stop auto tel linking

If you’re having the problem where a mobile browser is incorrectly auto linking a phone number you can always override this and disable it using the following META declaration:

<meta name="format-detection" content="telephone=no">

N.B: this will not stop your manual tel: references from working. So you will have more control over what the user is able to click.

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Until next time!

 

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