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Five-minute Friday · · 2 min read

Make your phone number tappable, in five minutes

The smallest fix with a real return. A number that dials when tapped, on every page, and how to check yours does.

Friday is one job before the kettle boils. This week it is the one that costs nothing and loses the most when it is missing.

On a phone, a number that is just typed on the page is a number the customer has to memorise, leave your site, open the dialler and type. A number that is a link dials when tapped. The difference between those two is the difference between a call and no call. StatCounter puts phones at about half of UK web page views, and the person with a burst pipe is not sitting at a desk.

Check yours first

  1. Open your site on your phone. Not the laptop.
  2. Find your phone number. If it is only in a picture or a logo, that is the first problem.
  3. Tap it. If the dialler opens with your number in it, you are done and you can have the kettle. If nothing happens, carry on.

The fix

  1. Wherever your number appears, it needs to be a link that starts with tel: and then the number with no spaces. For 01632 960418 that is tel:01632960418. The visible text can keep the spaces.
  2. On most page builders you add a link to the text and paste tel:01632960418 where a web address would go.
  3. Put it at the top of every page, not only the contact page. People ring from the page they land on.
  4. Tap it again on your phone to check. Then get someone else to try it on theirs.

Two things to know

A tap is not a call. If you use Google Analytics (GA4), it does not count phone taps unless someone sets that up, and even then a tap only means the dialler opened. The honest measure is still "the phone rang more".

And if your number is a mobile, say so. People on a landline budget, and people who want to text, both like to know.

The next five minutes

If you have a WhatsApp for the business, the same trick works with a WhatsApp link, so a customer can message you without saving your number. That is next Friday.

If your site is a page builder you cannot get into any more, or the nephew who built it has moved to Australia, the free check will tell you whether the number taps, along with the rest, and the Starter build comes with a login so you can fix things like this yourself from then on.

Dale, Pagefive