Web analytics and VOIP tech has advanced at a lightning pace in the past
few years. Tracking and attributing phone calls to marketing channels was
previously an arduous task for the local or international marketer, but finally,
it's now both cheap and easy to track the source of phone calls in your
marketing campaigns.
Better yet, you can track your calls to a great level of detail, including
discovering the source of each phone call (Google, Facebook, Google Ads,
etc.) and even discover the particular keyword or ad a phone call originated
from.
In case you're wondering how this wonderful technology works, most call
tracking platforms use a fancy technology called “dynamic number
insertion”, presenting different phone numbers to different users, depending
on where they came from, then tracking it in the platform and presenting the
data to you, all neat-and-tidy, on a reports screen or a mobile app.
Before running through popular tools for tracking calls, let's cover important
points to safeguard your search engine performance, and make sure you get
setup correctly.
Key points for implementing call tracking.
1. If you rely on SEO, or local SEO, it's important to keep your “real” phone
number displayed on your website, for both search users and Google-bot.
Make sure your developer is aware of this, and keep your “real” number
displayed at all times to these users in the call-tracking platform. If you
don ’ t do this, the “ NAP ” (Name, Address, Phone number) data displayed
on your site could become inconsistent, and have a negative impact on search
rankings.
2. Make sure the call tracking platform integrates with Google Ads and
Google Analytics.
3. If you're using a CRM system, like Salesforce and so on, you might want
to check the call tracking system links up with your particular CRM.
4. Finally, if you're on WordPress, or another CMS, ensure the call tracking
platform has a plugin for your particular CMS for easy setup. If the platform
has a plugin for the software running your site, this often means you can get
setup in under an hour or so.
Popular call tracking platforms on the market right now.
Call Rail
https://www.callrail.com/
Call Rail is popular for its ease-of-use, international support, integrations
with Google Analytics, Google Ads, WordPress, Salesforce and flexibility. It
also includes cool features like text messaging, geo-routing, voicemail and
more. Plans start at $30 per month.
Call Tracking Metrics
https://www.calltrackingmetrics.com/
Call Tracking Metrics is another popular platform, also offering international
support, Google Analytics, Google Ads, WordPress integrations, and overall,
similar features to Call Rail. Some online user reports mention preferring Call
Rail for its simplicity and flexibility, and found Call Tracking Metrics a little
difficult to navigate, but in the end, it's often best to trial both platforms
initially and see what works best for your business. Plans are a bit cheaper
than Call Rail and start at $19 per month.
Other web analytics tools.
There are many web analytics tools out there to help with improving the
performance of your site. Google Analytics is great for understanding overall
traffic performance, but if you want to delve deeper, check out the following
tools for greater insights:
Crazy Egg - Free to start. Plants start at $9 per month.
https://www.crazyegg.com/
If you want a visual indication of how visitors behave on your site once they
arrive, Crazy Egg is a fantastic tool. With Crazy Egg, you can get heat maps
of where visitors click on the page. You can also see heat maps of how far
visitors scroll down the page.
Visual Website Optimizer – 30 day free trial.
https://vwo.com/
Visual Website Optimizer is a popular split-testing analytics tool. With
Visual Website Optimizer, you can split test different variations of your site,
and see which version makes more sales or conversions, and increase your
overall sales.
Google Tag Assistant
https://get.google.com/tagassistant/
Google Tag Assistant is a handy free tool, for diagnosing any issues with the
tracking codes for all the fancy web tracking tools you ’ ve setup on your site.
It ’ s especially useful for developers diagnosing issues, when you ’ re having
obvious problems with your web analytics.
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