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Website analytics and the three numbers worth reading

Getting found 6 min read

Most website dashboards are noise dressed up as information. Three numbers tell you whether the site is working, and the rest you can safely ignore.

Somebody set up analytics on your site at some point, and once every few months you open it. There are graphs, percentages, a map of the world, and a figure called sessions that has gone down eleven percent, and you have no idea whether that is bad.

You close it again feeling slightly worse than before. That is a reasonable reaction, because most of what is on that screen was not built for a business with one van and a phone.

Why the dashboard makes you feel bad

Analytics tools are built for companies with staff whose whole job is looking at them. They show everything, because they do not know what you care about, and everything looks like it might matter.

Almost none of it does, for you. You do not need the split between phone models. You need to know whether the site is bringing you work and roughly where that work comes from. Three numbers cover it.

The first number is how many people asked you for something

Count contacts rather than visits: calls, form inquiries, texts, messages, people who walked in holding their phone.

This is the only number that maps onto money, and it is the one dashboards are worst at. A form submission is countable. A tap on your phone number is countable if the site records it. A call from somebody who read your site, wrote the number on a receipt and called two days later is countable by nothing, and that is a good share of the calls a trade gets.

So count it the crude way. A note on your phone: the date, and where they said they found you. Four weeks of that beats any dashboard, because it counts the thing you get paid for.

The second number is where they came from

Every analytics tool will group visitors into a few buckets, and the buckets are what matter, not the totals.

Search means somebody typed a problem or a trade and found you. Your Google Business Profile is often listed separately or shows as a referral, and for local trades it is frequently the biggest source of all. Social means Facebook or Instagram sent them. Direct means they typed your name or had you saved, which usually means word of mouth or a van they saw.

You are looking for shape, not precision. If almost everything is direct, your reputation is doing the work and search is not. If search is strong and inquiries are not, people are finding you and something on the site is losing them. Those are two completely different problems and this number is what tells them apart.

The third number is where they land and where they go next

Most owners assume visitors arrive at the home page. Usually they do not. Search drops people onto whichever page best matched what they typed, which is normally a service page.

So look at which pages people land on. If everybody arrives on your drain unblocking page, that page is your front door, and it needs your number, your area and a reason to trust you, whatever the home page says.

Then look at whether they went anywhere afterwards. Somebody who lands, reads and leaves may have got exactly what they came for, which is a phone number. That is a success that looks identical to a failure in the data, which is why the first number matters more than this one.

The numbers that matter less than they look

Most of these you can ignore with a clear conscience. The first one is the exception, because the definition changed under it.

Bounce rate. In the current version of Google Analytics it is the share of visits where nobody stayed more than ten seconds, opened a second page, or did anything you are counting. A high figure does mean most visits ended inside ten seconds with nothing happening, and on a trades site that is worth a look at the page. It is not a verdict either way, because somebody who reads your page for half a minute and then calls you counts as engaged, not as a bounce.

Time on page, which cannot tell reading from a phone left face up on a workbench.

Impressions, which counts how many times your listing appeared somewhere, including to people who never saw it.

And anything comparing you to an industry average, because the industry it means is not yours.

Some of your traffic is automated software crawling the web, and on a small site that can be a noticeable slice. It is why visit counts jump for no reason, and why a spike with no inquiries behind it means nothing happened.

How many visits should I be getting

There is no honest answer to this and you should be wary of anybody who gives you one. It depends on your trade, your town, how many people search for what you do, and how long you have been findable.

The only comparison worth making is against yourself. What were the numbers three months ago, and six. Slow movement in the right direction, with inquiries moving too, is what good looks like. A number somebody else's business gets tells you nothing you can use.

What to actually look at, once a month

Fifteen minutes, on the first Monday, with a coffee.

The question that beats every dashboard

Ask every caller how they found you, and write down the answer in their own words.

It takes four seconds and it is better data than any tool gives you, because it covers the parts software cannot see: the neighbor who recommended you, the van somebody photographed, the review that decided it. After thirty calls you will know more about where your work comes from than an analytics account will tell you in a year.

When the numbers are lying and the real problem is the form

If your visits look healthy and your inquiries have gone quiet, do not assume the traffic is bad traffic. Test the contact form first. Forms stop delivering without any visible sign, and the dashboard will keep showing you cheerful graphs while nothing arrives in your inbox.

Rule that out before you change anything else, and rule it out from a phone, on mobile data, like a customer would.

Questions people ask

Do I need Google Analytics for a small business website?

Not necessarily. If you get a handful of inquiries a week and you ask people how they found you, you already have the useful information. Analytics adds detail, not judgement.

What is a good number of website visitors for a local business?

There is no fair number to give you. Compare this quarter against your last quarter and watch whether inquiries move with the visits.

Why did my website traffic drop suddenly?

Often it is bots being filtered, a reporting change, or seasonality in your trade. Check whether inquiries dropped too. If they did not, nothing real has happened.

Is a high bounce rate bad?

Not on its own. In the current Google Analytics a bounce is a visit where nobody stayed ten seconds, opened a second page or did anything you count, so the customer who reads one page for half a minute and then calls you is not one. A high figure does say most visits ended inside ten seconds, which is worth a look at the page rather than a fright.

How do I know if my website is bringing me work?

Ask every caller where they found you and write it down for a month. That single habit answers the question better than any dashboard.

Should I pay somebody to send me monthly reports?

Only if the report says something you would act on.

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