| name | tel-mailto |
| description | Use when applies to contact pages, business listing pages, headers/footers, and any page displaying a phone number or email address. Use when auditing contact UX or schema-marked LocalBusiness pages. |
| metadata | {"category":"seo","priority":"medium","difficulty":"beginner","estimatedTime":"10","source":"frontendchecklist.io","url":"https://frontendchecklist.io/en/rules/seo/tel-mailto"} |
Tel & Mailto Links
On mobile devices, tel: and mailto: links trigger the native phone dialer and email client with one tap; plain-text contact info forces copy-paste and measurably reduces contact conversion rates.
Quick Reference
- Wrap phone numbers in
<a href="tel:+15551234567"> for click-to-call on mobile devices
- Wrap email addresses in
<a href="mailto:contact@example.com"> for one-click email compose
- Use E.164 format for
tel: links: + followed by country code and number, no spaces or dashes
- Plain text phone numbers and emails require users to copy-paste — a UX and conversion friction point
Check
Scan the HTML for phone numbers (patterns like \+?[0-9\s\-().]{7,}) and email addresses ([\w.-]+@[\w.-]+\.[a-z]{2,}). Verify that phone numbers are wrapped in <a href="tel:..."> and emails in <a href="mailto:...">. Flag any that appear as plain text.
Fix
Wrap each phone number in an anchor tag: <a href="tel:+15551234567">+1 (555) 123-4567</a>. Wrap each email in: <a href="mailto:contact@example.com">contact@example.com</a>. Format tel: values using E.164 (+[country][number]) without spaces.
Explain
Explain how tel: and mailto: URI schemes work in HTML, why E.164 format is required for international compatibility, and how these links improve mobile UX and contact conversion rates.
Code Review
Review metadata generation, rendered HTML, structured data, and response headers related to Tel & Mailto Links. Flag exact routes or templates where search-facing output violates the rule, and describe how to verify the final page output.
For full implementation details, code examples, and framework-specific guidance,
see references/rule.md.
Rule page: https://frontendchecklist.io/en/rules/seo/tel-mailto
