How to track calls in Yandex Metrica

If your website’s customers frequently call your business to verify information or confirm orders, you can track these calls and link them to those users’ actions on your website. In particular, you can find out the number and type of calls, and the end result, such as whether a purchase was made after visiting your site.

To obtain this information, you have to use a call tracking service and send 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. Names and descriptions of goals can be undefined (indicated data is sent through 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.

Moreover, goals and segments can be used for advertising in Yandex Direct, as well as for finding potential clients via Yandex Audience service (using look-alike technology).

What call data a call tracking service can transmit

A call tracking service can transmit additional information about calls.

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 with 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

1. Configure the ID system on the site.

2. 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.

3. The call tracking service has to set up data transfer via the Yandex Metrica API.

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 was enabled after data was sent to Yandex Metrica, and the conversion tracking period is still less than 21 days.

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 report “Calls, details” 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 went to the site on March 11, and called the company on March 13. In the report “Calls, details” for March 13, one call will be displayed, while the “Conversions” report will not show achievement of the “Call” goal, because the conversion is linked to the March 11 visit.

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