How to track phone number clicks on your website [step by step guide + video]

In a previous guide we showed you how to add a click to call button on your website.

We’ve also talked about how important it is to track calls from your website and have provided 4 different ways to do so.

Sure, the best way is to track actual calls and not clicks, but sometimes you may want to track phone number clicks to understand how many visitors click on the phone number.

Ready to dive in?

Not a fan of videos?

No worries!

We’ve got the process documented in detail below.

First thing is to open your website and check that your number is clickable.

By right clicking on your number and clicking on “Inspect Element” you can see that your number has the following code:

<a href="tel:+19787956037">(978) 795-6037</a>

the section that wraps the phone number tells us the number is indeed clickable.

Google Tag Manager is an amazing tool that let’s you add pieces of code without programming knowledge, making it easier for marketers and developers to manage and deploy code events effectively.

In this step we set up Google Tag Manager phone number tracking by creating a Tag and a Trigger so an event is sent to Google Analytics 4 each time someone clicks on the phone number on your website.

Click on Add new Tag and Name the Tag “Event – Phone Number Click”

Choose “Google Analytics” as the Tag Type.

…and then select “Google Analytics: GA4 Event”

Next you need to find the Measurement ID property in Google Analytics and paste it in Google Tag Manager.

Head Over to Google Analytics 4 and click on “Admin -> Data Streams -> [Name of your Data Stream]” and copy the Measurement ID

Paste this in the relevant section in Tag Manager

Enter an Event Name but make sure to keep it lowercase and without any spaces.

OPTIONAL: You can add additional event parameters. In this example I added click_url and click_text.

Next, you want to create the trigger. Enter “Click – Just Links” as the trigger type and choose “Some Link Clicks”.

Fire this trigger when the Click URL starts with tel: (as per example above).

That’s it! You are now ready to Submit the changes in Google Tag Manager! A good practice is to click on Preview, enter the website you wish to test and click on the phone number. Then check if the tag you just created fires. If it does, then submit the changes and deploy.

Once visitors on your website start clicking on the number, the event will show up in GA4.

Head over to Admin -> Data Display -> Events.

Find the Event you created and mark it as a conversion.

Congrats! 🥳

Now you have successfully managed to track phone numbers clicks from your website. Any click towards that phone number will be tracked as a conversion in Google Analytics 4.

But what next?

Should you pass this to Google Ads as a conversion?

This is something we wouldn’t advise!

If you are serious about conversion tracking, then you need to boost your Call Conversion setup.

Track actual calls towards the phone number – not just clicks.

Ready to learn how?

Nimbata has your back 🙂