Which Page Makes the Phone Ring? How to Track Phone Calls From Your Website

A woman calls a plumber at seven in the evening because her boiler has stopped. Asked how she found the business, she says "online". Across town, someone calls a restaurant after looking at its website. Both businesses get customers through their websites, but neither owner knows which pages brought them.

Your website can answer that. On a phone, people tap the number instead of typing it, and each tap happens on a specific page, after a specific search or ad. Counting these taps shows which pages and channels prompt visitors to call, and which pages get traffic but few calls. Across the sites we measure, about one in three recorded at least one phone-number tap in the past 90 days.

The five examples below each answer a different question: which page brings the calls, whether patients call or book online, whether the phone takes bookings the website could take, whether the ads are worth the money, and how buyers abroad prefer to get in touch. The businesses are made up. The dashboard reports are real Clickport reports, filled with the example numbers.

How do you track phone calls from your website?

A phone number on a website is usually a link that starts with tel:. Tap it on a phone and the call screen opens. An analytics tool can record that tap: the page it happened on, the time and where the visitor came from. Email addresses work the same way, as mailto: links.

Some things stay out of view. Whether the call went through, how long it lasted and what it was about all happen on the phone, not on the website. A call-tracking service covers that by giving each source its own phone number. A number written as plain text, without a link, can't be counted at all. And on a computer, a click on a phone link may open a calling app or do nothing, but it still counts as a tap, so check the Devices report before reading much into desktop numbers.

GA4 has no phone call report. Google's help for its automatic link tracking covers clicks that lead to another website and doesn't mention phone links. The usual advice is to set up a Tag Manager trigger on tel: links, send it to GA4 as an event and mark it as a key event. People ask about it on Stack Overflow and follow step-by-step videos to get it working. Once it works, the Pages and screens report shows the taps per page when you pick the event in its Key events column.

Clickport records taps on phone numbers and email addresses from the day you install it. To count them as conversions, add a click goal and pick Call link clicked or Email link clicked under Phone and email links. The goal includes every tap recorded since Clickport was installed, even if you add the goal today. Then click Conversions above the chart, and the Pages, Channels and Countries reports show conversions for each row (how the metric lens works).

Brackwater Heating: which page makes people call?

Brackwater Heating repairs and fits boilers in Leeds, and most jobs start with a phone call. The owner sets up the Call link clicked goal and looks at the last 30 days in the Pages report. The goal includes all taps recorded since Clickport was installed, so the owner can analyze the previous 30 days straight away.

Brackwater's pages over 30 days with Conversions selected. The site has one goal, Call link clicked, so each page shows the people who tapped the number on it.

People with a broken boiler tap the number on the repair pages: 7.0% of visitors on the repair page and 8.5% on the emergency page.

The installation page is different. A new boiler is Brackwater's biggest job, and 880 people read the page last month, but only 9 tapped the number. The page has a long price guide, and the number is in the footer, below a quote form. I'd put a "Talk to us about a new boiler" button with the number right next to the price guide. If the quote form is a goal too, it also shows whether installation customers simply prefer to write.

The boiler pressure guide brings almost 2,000 readers and 6 taps. That's fine for a guide that helps people fix the problem themselves, but a line at the end, "Still losing pressure after a refill? Call us", costs nothing to try.

A tap isn't a booked job, so once a month I'd compare the taps with the jobs in Brackwater's diary.

Birchmoor Dental: do new patients call or book online?

Birchmoor Dental is a practice in Norwich. Patients can call or book online, and reception is overwhelmed on Monday mornings, so the practice manager wants more people to book online. She tracks both with two goals, Call link clicked and Online booking made. In the Goals report, the phone goal is listed under the link text visitors click, "Call 01632 960 412".

Birchmoor's goals over 30 days, split with the Devices filter. The Goals list also counts events: 183 taps on the number and 66 online bookings, because a few people tapped twice or booked for two family members.

On computers, visitors prefer the booking form: 42 bookings against 15 phone taps. On phones, the pattern reverses: 132 taps against just 19 bookings.

The manager tests the form on her own phone. It sits below a long list of treatments, and the date picker is hard to use with a thumb. The Call button is the first thing visitors see.

I'd move Book online above Call on phones and fix the date picker. Then I'd check whether mobile bookings go up over the next month. If they do, reception should get fewer calls on Monday mornings.

Saffron Yard: does the phone take bookings the website could?

Saffron Yard is a restaurant in Edinburgh. Guests can book a table online through a booking service, by phone, or by email for private events. The Outbound report shows which of these links visitors click, including the phone number, the email address and the booking service.

Saffron Yard's outbound links over 30 days.

More people tap the number than click through to the booking service: 214 against 132. Filtered to the phone row, the daily chart shows most of these visits on Fridays and Saturdays, when the kitchen is busiest and nobody has a hand free for the phone.

The owner checks the menu page. The number sits at the top, while "Book a table" is at the bottom, below the full menu. I'd move the booking button to the top and keep the number next to it for large groups.

A click on the booking link isn't a booking. Clickport can't see whether a visitor completes the booking on the other site. If the booking service can send the confirmation back, you can count bookings made on another website as a goal too.

Ashcombe Hale: are the ads worth it?

Ashcombe Hale is a firm of employment solicitors in Manchester. People call when they've lost a job or fear they will. The firm pays for search ads and for a listing in an online legal directory, and both are up for renewal. The Channels report, with Conversions selected, shows how many visitors from each channel tapped the number.

Ashcombe Hale's channels over 30 days with the Call link clicked goal.

Most of the people who tapped the number came from Google's ordinary results. The legal directory, nearly all of the Referral row, has the best rate: 14 taps from 230 visitors. The ads bring 9 taps from 410 visitors, the lowest rate apart from social. The entry pages for Paid Search offer a possible explanation: most ad visitors land on the home page rather than a page about their problem.

So I'd renew the directory listing. Before spending more on ads, I'd point each ad at its own page, such as unfair dismissal ads at the unfair dismissal page, and compare the paid row after a month.

One source is missing. People who find the firm on Google Maps or in its Google Business Profile can call straight from the profile. Taps on the profile's call button show up only in Business Profile's own numbers, under Calls. Visits from the profile's website link usually arrive as Google in Organic Search, or as Direct. Tag that link with utm_source=google, utm_medium=organic and utm_campaign=business-profile, and the Campaigns report shows profile visitors and their taps separately (how campaign tags work).

Corvane Fasteners: how do buyers abroad get in touch?

Corvane Fasteners sells bolts, rivets and anchors to manufacturers from a warehouse in Sheffield, and a fifth of its orders now come from the rest of Europe. The product pages show a phone number and a sales email, and the sales director tracks both with Call link clicked and Email link clicked. Filtering the Countries report by each goal shows how buyers in each country get in touch.

Corvane's countries over 30 days, with the Email link clicked and Call link clicked goals. Visitors come from the same list without a goal filter.

UK buyers prefer the phone: 64 tapped the number and 38 clicked the email address. Buyers in Germany, the Netherlands and Poland prefer email, with 57 email clicks and only 3 taps between them. Ireland behaves like the UK.

That's not surprising. A buyer in Hamburg may prefer to write rather than phone a Sheffield sales office and explain a part number in his second language. Yet on the product pages, the email address sits in small print under the phone number.

I'd show the email address at the same size as the number, with a line saying replies come within one working day. If the German row keeps growing, a German-speaking contact would be the next step.

A click on an email link opens the visitor's mail program, but it doesn't tell you whether the email was sent. The sales inbox shows how many arrived.

What to do next

Add the Call link clicked goal, and Email link clicked if your site shows an email address. Both goals include taps recorded since Clickport was installed, even if you add the goals today. You can look at the results straight away:

1. Which pages bring the most taps, and which busy pages bring almost none.
2. Which channels bring visitors who tap the number, and which bring visitors who never do.
3. Whether people on phones and on computers get in touch in different ways.

Once you know which pages bring calls, you can improve the pages that aren't working. Clickport records phone-number and email-link taps without cookies, from the day you install it. Try it free for 30 days, with no credit card required. If you're switching from GA4, the switching guide explains how to get started.

Frequently asked questions

How do I track phone calls from my website in GA4?

GA4 has no phone call report. The common setup is a Tag Manager trigger that fires on clicks on tel: links and sends an event to GA4, which you then mark as a key event. To see which pages the taps came from, open Reports, then Engagement, then Pages and screens, and switch the Key events column from All events to your phone event.

Can I track phone calls without call-tracking software?

You can track the taps on your phone number, which shows which pages and channels lead visitors to tap it. You can't see whether the call connected or what was said. That needs call-tracking software, which shows a different number per source and counts the calls.

Does a tap on the phone number mean someone called?

Not always. Someone can tap and hang up, and on a computer a click may not start a call at all. On a phone, a tap opens the call screen with your number ready, so it's the closest a website gets to the call itself. Compare the taps with your call log now and then.

Can I see calls from my Google Business Profile?

Taps on the call button in your Business Profile never reach your website. Business Profile counts them under Calls in its own performance report. Visits from the profile's website link do reach your site, and you can tag that link to see them separately.

Do I need cookies to track phone number taps?

No. Clickport records taps on phone and email links without cookies.