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I'm working on a landing page for a private taxi. The desired action on this page is to make a phone call.

Now, there's a big phone number and a small script to track the clics on it. That works well for mobile users, but this design doesn't allow me to track calls made by desktop users and tablets users. I want to keep the original phone number and do not want to use another number provided by a service specialized in phone call tracking.

A solution would be to use a button with a CTA. It would reveal the phone number when desktop users clic on it and make the phone call for mobile users. Users would be forced to clic on it if they are interested.

To complement the main CTA ("call now"), a link to download the card could be added to the page and would be secondary objective.

I would like to have your feelings about this idea?

Do you think this idea is too frustrating for the users if there's no phone number on the page at a first look?

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    This question reads like: "Should I hide the phonenumber that people actually come to the page to find so that I can get more accurate tracking?". I guess it depends what is more important to you - actually getting customers to use your service, or just acquiring some tracking information. Personally I would never sacrifice usability just to help the marketing team get better stats.
    – JonW ♦
    Oct 8, 2014 at 11:12
  • Couldn't agree with JonW more. Can't you look at this from another viewpoint - how my redesigned page has translated into more calls & business as opposed to click metrics?
    – Wander
    Oct 8, 2014 at 11:21
  • Thanks for your comments. I'm thinking like you: usability and simplicity are more important than stats. I can get the feeling from the taxi driver because he receives the phone calls directly. I think I'll add a link to download the vcard, which is useful for the customer. For mobile users, I can make a test to see if it is better to stay with the phone number or to replace it with a CTA or something mixed (button with CTA and a small phone number somewhere else).
    – benoit
    Oct 8, 2014 at 11:39
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    Just because you may have some analytics against a phonenumber that doesn't 100% guarantee that people are using it in the way you expect. People may open the link on a PC so they can input the phonenumber on their mobile manually, or may copy-and-paste the number to store / send it to an email, or may just want to look at the number to see if it's a free one or not. Not everyone who looks at a phonenumber wants to call it there-and-then (if at all).
    – JonW ♦
    Oct 8, 2014 at 11:44

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Hiding the key information that users want is always a bad idea.

In addition, it's not even clear why this tracking would be useful. If you want to track calls made, you have to actually track calls made. That can only be done on the phone side. The fact that a desktop user clicked to reveal the phone number, or even that a mobile user clicked on the number, doesn't indicate that a call was placed (they may have changed their mind after the phone opened, or just wanted to put it in their address book).

Why not just track visits to the site?

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  • I track already the visits to the site. The calls are the goal of the page: I'm interested to track them, not only visits. The conclusion is that I cannot improve the tracking of phone calls on the website in a user friendly manner. It would require to change the phone number by one provided by a service specialized in phone call tracking.
    – benoit
    Oct 15, 2014 at 12:52
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Upfront disclosure: I work for a call tracking software company and we've helped many clients with this exact issue.

I agree with @dan1111, clicking to reveal a number doesn't mean (or measure) that your lead actually calls you. It just tells you that they clicked to get the number.

If calls being placed and converted (calls resulting in sales or a minimum time connected to agents) are the metrics that you are after, then you should be using a call tracking solution. There are a number of solutions out there, and they are designed to integrate quickly with your web, mobile and app experiences to do exactly this kind of tracking. Good ones will allow you to track and exchange data with your other analytics and reporting tools to complete you attribution picture.

For your use case, call tracking would provide you with a dedicated phone number or extension linked to each call. Plus with mobile, you may take advantage of tap-to-call capabilities and avoid presenting a number -- "Click to Call Now" for example. Now you have the click, the fact that they actually called you, and at the end of the call the result of that call.

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