Are you in an industry where you get a lot of phone calls from users? With over 3.7 billion mobile internet users, it’s more convenient and efficient for people to call businesses to get information or resolve their queries.
As a marketer, it’s important that you track phone number clicks on your website and see where your visitors are coming from. Using the data, you can create personalized marketing campaigns and show the right information at the right time.
In this article, we’ll show you how to track phone number clicks (tel links) in Google Analytics. Let’s begin…
How to Track Phone Number Clicks Touches in Google Analytics?
When it comes to tracking phone number clicks, then sadly Google Analytics doesn’t track your telephone links automatically.
To get data about how people interact with your phone number, you’ll have to create custom events in Google Analytics. If you try to create events manually, you’ll have to edit the code and then enter it on your web pages.
Now, unless you’re a developer, this isn’t possible for everyone. So, is there a simple way?
There are 3 ways you can learn how to track tel links as events in Analytics:
- Use MonsterInsights to Track Phone Number Clicks – Recommended Way
- Track Tel Links using Google Tag Manager – Difficult Way
- Use Onclick Parameter for Tracking Number Link Clicks – Requires Coding
Let’s take a look at each of these methods…
1. Use MonsterInsights to Track Phone Number Clicks
The first method we have for you is to track phone number clicks through MonsterInsights. It’s the most simple and easy way where you don’t have to touch any code or perform an additional setup.
All you have to do is install MonsterInsights on your WordPress website and the plugin will take care of the rest. It automatically sets up and tracks different events in Google Analytics, including tel link clicks.
MonsterInsights is the best Google Analytics plugins for WordPress. You can use it to connect Analytics with your WordPress site in just a few clicks.
Besides that, you can view your reports in your dashboard and make a decision there and then. But what makes MonsterInsights great is that you can set up advanced tracking that Google Analytics doesn’t track by default.
It automatically tracks custom events right out of the box in any of its premium plans. And some of these events include:
- Telephone number link clicks (tel)
- Email link clicks (mailto)
- Affiliate link clicks
- Outbound link clicks
- Form impressions and conversions
- Download file link clicks
2. Track Tel Links as Events Using Google Tag Manager
The next method you can use to track phone number clicks in Google Analytics is using Tag Manager. It’s another tool offered by Google that lets you edit website tags without editing the code.
But there are some prerequisites for this method. First, you’ll need to install Google Tag Manager in WordPress. Second, you’ll have to connect your Google Analytics with Tag Manager.
Once you’ve done this, just follow these steps:
Step 1: Log in to your Tag Manager account and then create a new Trigger.
Step 2: Enter a name for your trigger and select Just Links as the trigger type.
Step 3: Now change your trigger settings. First, check both the boxes Wait for Tags and Check Validation.
Next, you’ll have to tell the Tag Manager when to fire the trigger. For it to run on all your pages, select Page URL » matches RegEx » .* under Enable this trigger when all of these conditions are true.
After that, you’ll have to specify that the trigger should fire when someone clicks on your phone number. To do that, select these conditions: Click » URL contains » tel: and click Save.
Step 4: Go to Tags and click on New for your phone number click tracking.
Step 5: Enter a name for your tag and select your Google Analytics property under tag type.
Step 6: The next thing to do is configure your tag. First, select Track Type asEvent and then enter the following details:
- Give a name under Category for your tag (like Telephone)
- Choose Click URL for Action
- Select Page Path for Label
- Keep Value field empty
- Select False for Non-interaction Hit
- Select your Google Analytics Settings
Step 7: Now scroll down and click on Trigger. Here you can select the trigger you created in the earlier steps (Tel Link Clicks) and hit Save.
Step 8: You can Preview and Submit your tag on your website.
Step 9: After successfully creating a tag in Google Tag Manager, the next thing is to create a goal in Google Analytics so you can view conversions of your phone number link clicks.
And to do that, go to your Analytics account then navigate to Admin » Goals » + New Goal.
Step 10: Now select Custom under Goal Setup and click Continue. Next, you’ll see the Goal description screen where you can enter the name of your goal. For goal type, select Event and click Continue.
Step 11: For Goal details, you’ll have to enter the exact same details that you did in the Tag Manager. So, for Category enter Telephone, for Action enter Click URL, and for Label enter Page Path. You can then verify your goal and click Save.
Congratulations! You’ve now successfully created an event for phone number clicks in Google Analytics using Tag Manager.
3. Use Onclick Parameter for Tracking Number Link Clicks
The last method you can use is to create a custom event tracking code using the Onclick parameter. But do note that this requires editing and inserting code on your website.
But before you start, here’s what your telephone links look like as a code (or in HTML):
<a href=”tel:8881234567″>CALL (888) 123-4567</a>
You’ll need this code in a bit. Now let’s see what an onclick parameter looks like:
onclick=”gtag(‘event’, ‘contact’, { event_category: ‘phone call’, event_action: ‘click’, event_label:’contact number’})”
As you can see, you’ll have to define variables like category and action in this code. To create a custom event code, enter the following details:
Category – This is the name of your event, so you can enter Telephone as your category
Action – You can give a name to your interaction when someone clicks on the link, like Click to Call
Label – This will your phone number you want to track (888) 123-4567
Once you’ve entered these details in your onclick parameter, your new code should look like this:
<a href=”tel:18883802260″ onclick=”gtag(‘event’, ‘click’, { event_category: ‘phone call tracking’, event_action: ‘Click to Call’,event_label:’888-123-4567’})>”CALL (888) 123-4567″</a>
The next thing you’ll need to do is insert this code on your website and Google Analytics will start tracking your phone number clicks.
With that, where can you see the data of these clicks? Let’s find out…
How to View Google Analytics Track Phone Number Clicks?
After you’ve used any of the methods to set up phone number click tracking, the next step is to look at the data recorded by Google Analytics.
And to do that, login to your Google Analytics account. Then navigate to Behavior » Events » Top Events.
Here you can click on telephone, look at the event action and event label. And if you want to see where your traffic is coming from then use secondary dimensions like source or medium to get more insights.
And that’s it!
