A “click to call” button or link on a mobile or smartphone website can mean the difference between getting a customer to call or losing them forever. Converting customers with mobile sites is a different discipline from converting customers on desktop websites: mobile website visitors are unlikely to read long sales copy, are similarly unlikely to send an email, and are certainly not going to fill out a lengthy web form. In the mobile environment, a phone call is your best route to conversion–after all, your visitors have the phone in their hand!

Coding the Click to Call Link for Mobile Phones (updated for 2015)

To create a click to call link, use the following code:

<a href="tel:8005551212">800-555-1212</a>

“Selling” the Click

Now, let’s improve our click to call link. After all, all we’ve done with the above link is make the phone number clickable; will users know that the phone number is a click to call link? We can “sell” the click by adding a call to action to our link:

<a href="tel:8005551212">Click HERE to Call: 800-555-1212</a>

That’s an improvement, it serves to highlight the link and directs users with a call to action.

Pro Tip: Visually Improving the Click to Call Button

To take our click to call link even further, we can add an arrow to visually guide users to the desired action–and maybe even add a second call to action. You can see this technique in action on the following mobile site:

Pro Tip: Advanced Analytics Tracking for Mobile Calls

We’ve written a tutorial on how to track the phone calls through a click to call link with Google Tag Manager and Google Analytics.