If your site sends phones to a separate version, check that it carries the same Analytics tracking code as the main site. Otherwise phone visitors vanish from your reports and the site seems to be shrinking.

A graph that keeps going down

The Analytics graph has drifted down for three years. Each spring shows fewer visits than the spring before, and the owner has begun to wonder what the website is doing.

The phone tells a different story. Calls are steady, and new customers say they found the business online.

One common explanation is a separate version of the site for phones, added years ago, that reports nowhere. Every visitor on a phone is redirected to it, and none of them is counted.

As more customers search on phones, more of them disappear from the reports, and the graph falls while the business does not.

Where separate versions hide

The third is the hardest to spot. Some mobile site services built the phone version on their own servers, so it never appears among the site's files, and only phones ever see it.

How the phone version got there

Before responsive design was common, the usual way to serve phones was a second, simpler site. A script on the main site detected phones and sent them to it.

Many were built by a different company from the main site: a mobile site service, an add-on to an advertising package, or a developer hired for that one job.

Whoever set it up rarely added the main site's tracking code. Some added their own, reporting to an account the business never sees. Others added none.

Most were meant as a stopgap until a proper redesign, and then stayed in place for years after everyone forgot about them.

Checking your own site

Load the site on a phone and look at the address bar. If it changes to m. or to another address, there is a separate version.

On a computer, visit that address and view the page source. Search it for UA-, the start of an Analytics tracking ID, and compare the number with the one on the main site.

In Analytics, the mobile overview report shows the share of visits from phones. If that share looks implausibly small for your kind of business, phones are being counted somewhere else, or nowhere.

Ask whoever built the main site whether they know of any other versions. Quite often nobody does.

A worked example

A fence rental company supplies temporary fence panels, gates and crowd barriers to builders, event organisers and homeowners in the middle of renovations.

Its main site dated from 2010. In 2012 a mobile site service added a phone version on an m. address, with a quote button and the phone number, and the company was glad to have it.

By this year the main site's Analytics showed visits falling year after year, while bookings held steady. The owner was about to pay for search work to reverse the decline.

A check on a phone found the m. address. Its source carried no tracking code at all. Every builder who had looked the company up from a job site since 2012 was missing from the reports.

The main site's tracking ID went onto the m. site that afternoon, with an annotation marking the date, and phone visits began appearing alongside the rest.

The old graph could not be repaired. But the decision about search work could now be made on figures that counted everyone.

Measuring both versions in one place

The aim is one Analytics property that sees every version of the site, so a visitor's path from a phone search to the quote form is one story.

Put the same tracking ID on every page of the phone version. With the standard Universal Analytics code, a www address and an m. address on the same domain are treated as one site.

A phone version on a vendor's domain needs cross-domain tracking set up, which is a good reason to bring it home or replace it.

Add a filter that shows the host name with each page in the reports, so the contact page on the phone version and the one on the main site can be told apart.

Reading the old figures

The missing history cannot be filled in. The years when phone visits went uncounted will always look smaller than they were.

Annotate the date of the change and compare across it carefully. A jump in visits the week the code went on is measurement, not growth, and should not be credited to anything else done that month.

If the phone version had tracking under someone else's account, ask for access or an export. Those figures may be the only record of phone visits for those years.

What else a separate version misses

Missing tracking is rarely the only gap. Phone versions built years ago often lack the goals set up on the main site, so quote requests from phones were never recorded as conversions.

The phone version's form may send email to a different address, or to someone who has left. Test it.

And its content may be years out of date: old prices, old hours, a phone number since changed. Pages added to the main site since, such as new services, may never have reached it.

The counter-case

A site that is already responsive, with one version for every screen, has nothing to find here beyond confirming the tracking code is on every page.

Some phone versions were also set up properly, with the same tracking ID and goals, and only need checking.

And a separate phone version is itself a stopgap. Measuring it properly is the right step this week; replacing it with a responsive design is the right step soon after.

Wherever versions of your site exist, find all of them and measure them in one place.

The check

  1. Open your site on a phone.
  2. Note any change in the address.
  3. Search the phone version's source for UA-.
  4. Add the main tracking ID if it is missing.
  5. Filter reports to show the host name.
  6. Annotate the date of the change.
  7. Test the phone version's forms and goals.

Step three takes a minute and settles the question. If the phone version's source carries no tracking ID, or a different one, every phone visitor since it launched is missing from your reports.

Why a separate phone version is a stopgap at best is covered in a mobile plugin bolted onto an old site.

Frequently asked questions

Why would phone visits be missing from Analytics?

A separate phone version, often added by another company, may carry no tracking code or report to a different account, so every phone visitor goes uncounted.

How do I know if there is a phone version?

Open it on a phone and watch the address bar. If it changes to m. or another address, phones are being sent to a separate version.

How do I check the phone version's tracking?

View the source of a phone version page on a computer and search for UA-. Compare that tracking ID with the one on the main site.

Can the missing history be recovered?

Not in your own reports. If the phone version reported to someone else's account, ask for access or an export of those figures.

Will visits jump after the fix?

The reports will show more visits, but that is measurement rather than growth. Annotate the date so nobody credits the jump to something else.

Should the separate version be replaced?

Eventually, yes. Measure it properly now, then plan a responsive design that serves every screen from one site with one set of figures.

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.

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