A tracking number is only useful if customers see it. On printed advertising that is straightforward — you print the tracking number instead of your own. On a website it is more delicate, because the same page is seen by visitors who arrived from paid advertising, from search, and from typing the address in directly, and you would like to tell them apart.
Number swapping is how that is done. The idea is that the website shows a tracking number in place of the tribe's own published number, chosen by how the visitor arrived, so a call from the website is distinguishable from a call from a sign on the door. The visitor sees an ordinary phone number and notices nothing.
The two switches
Swapping will happen only when both of these are on, and both are on by default. There is therefore nothing here you need to switch on to get ready: permission is already granted, and what is still missing is the website behaviour described above. Once that behaviour is built, a tribe will swap numbers unless somebody has turned one of these off in the meantime.
| Switch | Where to find it | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Allow phone number swapping on websites | Calls, then Call Settings | The organisation-wide master switch. Off means no tribe swaps, whatever its own switch says. |
| Enable phone number swapping for this location | The tribe's Telephone Settings, under Website Number Swapping | Turns swapping on or off for that one tribe. Shown but not changeable while the master switch is off. |
The arrangement is deliberate. Head office keeps a single control that stops swapping everywhere at once if something goes wrong, and individual tribes can still opt out — which some will want to do if they are running their own tracking through a different system, or if they simply want their own number on their own page.
The numbers a page would swap in
The switches decide whether swapping is allowed. What would actually be shown comes from three fields further down the same Telephone Settings screen, and a website reads whichever one matches how the visitor arrived. A field left empty simply means there is nothing to swap in for that kind of visit, and the main number stands.
| Field | Shown to |
|---|---|
| Organic Number | Visitors who arrived from an unpaid search result. |
| Paid Number | Visitors who arrived from paid advertising. |
| URL Triggers | Visitors whose web address carries a particular parameter and value — one row per parameter, each with its own number. Use these for anything more specific than paid and organic, such as a single campaign. |
Each of these has a Select from tribe numbers button beside it, which lists the tracking numbers already assigned to that tribe so you do not have to type one in. The Main Telephone Number at the top of the same screen is the number a visitor sees when none of the three applies, and it is the number used to attribute incoming calls to the tribe — so it is worth checking first if a tribe says the wrong number is showing anywhere at all.
Websites Gorilla Dash did not build
These settings are not limited to websites Gorilla Dash built. Both switches, all three numbers and the URL triggers are published over the tribe data feeds any site can read, including the WordPress one, so a site built elsewhere can be made to honour them by whoever maintains it. What Gorilla Dash provides is the record of what each tribe wants shown; acting on it is the website's job.
Either way the calls arrive in Gorilla Dash, because that depends on the tracking number being dialled rather than on which site displayed it.