Phone Numbers That Are Not Links

Past the obvious version

The basic case is well established: a phone number printed as plain text on a phone has to be memorised and retyped, and most people will not do that for a business they have not chosen yet.

The fix is to make it a tap-to-call link, and most sites built in the last few years have done that.

What has not happened is anybody testing them. So a large number of sites have numbers that are correctly linked in principle and fail in practice, which is a worse position than having plain text, because nobody is looking for a problem.

The number that is a picture

The most common failure and the easiest to miss.

A phone number placed inside a header graphic, a banner image, or a logo lockup looks entirely normal and is not text at all.

It cannot be tapped, it cannot be copied, it cannot be read aloud by a screen reader, and it cannot be found by a search engine or matched against your business listing.

It also cannot be changed without redoing the image, which is why numbers in graphics are frequently the ones that are out of date.

The test is to try selecting it. If you cannot drag across it and highlight it, neither can anything else.

Formatting that breaks the dial

A link can point at a number the dialler cannot use.

The address inside the link should contain the digits and, ideally, the country code, with no spaces, brackets, or decorative characters.

What is displayed to the reader can be formatted however you like, with spaces and brackets for readability. The two are separate, and the common mistake is copying the pretty version into the link.

Including the country code matters more than people expect. A visitor whose phone is on a foreign network, or who is roaming, may find a local-format number fails to connect, and those are often the most valuable enquiries.

Extensions

A specific case that almost always fails silently.

An extension appended to a number as if it were part of it produces a link the dialler either rejects or dials incorrectly.

There are standard ways to express a pause and an extension in a dial string, and they are inconsistently supported across handsets.

For a public-facing page the safer approach is to link the main number cleanly and show the extension beside it as text for the person to enter when prompted.

A link that dials the switchboard reliably is worth more than one that attempts the extension and fails on a third of devices.

Where numbers hide

• Inside header and banner graphics.
• In downloadable documents and price lists.
• In third-party widgets such as booking or chat tools.
• In the footer only, many screens down.
• On the contact page and nowhere else.
• In email signatures and autoresponders.

The last two matter because they are the numbers people use once a conversation has started, and an old number there costs you an existing customer rather than a prospective one.

More than one number

Businesses accumulate numbers, and a page listing four of them makes the visitor choose.

On a phone, in a hurry, a choice is friction. Somebody who is not sure which number is right will often pick wrong, reach the wrong person, and form a poor impression before speaking to anybody useful.

Where possible, show one number prominently and route it internally.

Where several are genuinely necessary, label each by what the caller wants rather than by department, since callers know their own problem and not your structure.

A worked example

A plumbing company checked their site after enquiries fell without any drop in traffic.

The header number was tappable and correct.

The number in the mobile menu was inside an image, left over from an earlier design.

The number on three service pages included the extension for the office line, and on two common handsets the link failed to dial at all.

And the number in their booking widget, supplied by a third party, was an old one from before a move, which nobody had thought to check because it was not part of the site.

Three of the four routes to calling them were broken, and every one had looked correct to anybody glancing at a desktop.

Fixing all four took under two hours, and call volume recovered over the following weeks.

After the tap

Worth raising, because a working link is only the first half of a phone call.

The link succeeds and the call rings out, goes to a voicemail nobody checks, or reaches an automated menu that a person standing in the rain will not navigate.

Somebody who taps a call button has done everything you asked and reached nothing, which is a worse outcome than a broken link, because they will not try again.

If the number is on the site, it should be answered during the hours the site says you are open, and where it cannot be, the site should say so and offer the alternative plainly.

Tracking numbers

A common source of quiet breakage, particularly where advertising is involved.

Systems that swap the displayed number to attribute calls to a campaign work by rewriting the page after it loads, and when the script fails, is blocked, or is slow, the visitor sees a placeholder, an old number, or nothing.

If you use call tracking, check what the page shows when the script does not run, which is the situation for a meaningful share of mobile visitors on poor connections.

The fallback should always be your real number rather than an empty space, and it is worth confirming that it is.

The counter-case

Not every business should push people to call.

Where a team is small and already stretched, an unstructured phone call is an expensive way to receive an enquiry, and a form that captures the details first genuinely serves both sides better.

Some enquiries also need information the caller does not have to hand, and a phone conversation that ends with please email us the details has wasted everybody's time.

But that is a decision to make deliberately. Publishing a number and having it not work is not a strategy, it is an accident, and the visitor cannot tell the difference between a business that prefers forms and one whose call button is broken.

The check

1. Try selecting every number to confirm it is text.
2. Check the link contains digits only, with the country code.
3. Remove extensions from links and show them as text.
4. Tap every number on a real phone and confirm it dials.
5. Check widgets, documents, and signatures too.
6. Reduce to one number where you can.
7. Call it yourself during opening hours and see what happens.

Step seven is the one nobody does and the one most likely to find something serious.

The basic case is covered in making the phone number tappable.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.