How to track calls in Yandex Metrica

If your website users frequently call your business to verify information or confirm orders, you can track these calls and link them to users' actions on your website. In particular, you can find out how many and what type of calls you received, and the end result, such as whether a purchase was made after visiting your website.

To get this information, you need to use a call tracker that transmits call data to Yandex Metrica via the API.

In Yandex Metrica, calls are tracked using goals. The first time data is transmitted from the call tracker, a special goal is created. It's displayed on the Goals page in the left menu in Yandex Metrica. You can use any names and descriptions of goals (specified when transmitting data via the API).

You can add the goal to all Yandex Metrica reports. When it's added to a report, goal metrics become available for it. You can choose a goal and its metrics as conditions for creating a segment.

In addition, you can use the goal and segments to advertise with Yandex Direct and Yandex Display, and to find potential customers (using look-alike technology) with Yandex Audience.

What call data a call tracking service can transmit

A call tracking service can transmit additional information about calls. After this information is processed, you'll find it in the Calls group of reports within 24 hours of uploading.


Information	Required	Report
Date and time of call	Yes	The Calls, details report.
Call duration	No	The Call processing quality report. The Calls, details report.
Time on hold	No	The Call processing quality report. The Calls, details report.
Missed call	No	The Call processing quality report.
First-time or repeat call	No	The Call sources report. The Calls, details report.
Phone number	No	The Calls, details report.
URL of the page where the phone number is published	No	The Calls, details report.
Link to call tracking service website	No	The Calls, details report.
Notes. Used for noting important information (for instance, “the customer wasn't happy about the price”).	No	The Calls, details report.
Cost of call (as revenue by goal)	No	Most reports if you add the Income conversion metric.


Information	Required	Report
Date and time of call	Yes	The Calls, details report.
Call duration	No	The Call processing quality report. The Calls, details report.
Time on hold	No	The Call processing quality report. The Calls, details report.
Missed call	No	The Call processing quality report.
First-time or repeat call	No	The Call sources report. The Calls, details report.
Phone number	No	The Calls, details report.
URL of the page where the phone number is published	No	The Calls, details report.
Link to call tracking service website	No	The Calls, details report.
Notes. Used for noting important information (for instance, “the customer wasn't happy about the price”).	No	The Calls, details report.
Cost of call (as revenue by goal)	No	Most reports if you add the Income conversion metric.

How to transmit call data

Configure the ID system on the site.
The call tracking service must determine which method of tracking calls it uses: dynamic or static.

With the dynamic method, the call tracking service assigns a phone number to each user session, meaning it uses number substitution. When the call tracker transmits a dynamic call, Yandex Metrica links the call data to the nearest session appropriate by time. Static calls aren't linked to user sessions.

To view information about what type of call was transmitted and how accurately the data was linked, use the Calls, Details report.
Set up transmitting call tracking service data via the Yandex Metrica API.

Note. When transmitting data, it is important to pay attention to the response from the API: if the file content is incorrect or it is in an invalid format, the response to the request contains information about the error. This response means that the file didn't pass validation.

If the file passed validation but certain rows contain errors or extra empty rows were transmitted, the data for these rows isn't shown in Yandex Metrica reports.

Questions and answers

Why Yandex Metrica doesn't link a call with a session

Yandex Metrica doesn't link calls to users and user sessions in the following cases:

A user ID was transmitted that doesn't exist in the Yandex Metrica database.
The user's session ended after the call that was transmitted to the service, or earlier than 21 days before the data was sent.
Conversion tracking is enabled after data was transmitted to Yandex Metrica and the conversion tracking period hasn't reached 21 days yet.

Why there aren't any statistics for the “Call” goal

Statistics for the “Call” goal are collected and displayed in reports when Yandex Metrica links a call to a session.

The number of calls in the “Calls, details” report is different from the number of times the “Call” goal was reached for the same period

In the “Calls, details” report, the date and time of the call indicate exactly when it was made. The session this call is linked to might have taken place earlier. For example, a user visited the site on March 11 and called the company on March 13. In the “Calls, details” report for March 13, one call will be displayed, while the “Conversions” report will not show the “Call” goal achievement, because the conversion is linked to the visit on March 11.