"How many visits did we get?" - that is the first question most businesses ask about their website. And usually the only one. The problem is that the number of visits tells you nothing about whether the site is doing its job.
A website earns in a single moment: when someone gets in touch. Everything else is a metric that explains that moment - it tells you what to fix so there are more inquiries. Here are four worth tracking, and one that is not.
1. Start with one number: how many customers get in touch
This is the metric that counts. Add up every real contact in a month: submitted forms, calls, emails, messages. Not visits, not likes - contacts from people who can actually buy from you.
If you measure only one thing, measure this. Everything else below exists to make this number grow.
2. Conversion rate - how many visitors take a step
The raw number of contacts is not enough, because you cannot tell whether it is a lot. So divide: contacts by visits.
Example: 500 visits and 10 contacts is 2%. If next month you have 1,000 visits and still 10 contacts, traffic grew but the site got worse at convincing people. Traffic alone can mislead - the conversion rate does not.
There is no single "good" value - for a service website, 1–3% is a typical starting point. More important than a benchmark is whether your result rises month over month.
3. Where people come from
Two sites with the same number of visits can be worth completely different amounts, depending on where that traffic comes from. Split it by source:
- Google (organic) - people who searched for something and found you. Usually the most valuable.
- Ads - traffic you pay for. Here it especially pays to count what one contact costs.
- Social media - from Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn.
- Direct - someone typed the address or clicked your business profile.
Once you know which source brings customers, you also know where it is worth putting more in - and where to stop burning budget. If you want more to come from Google without paying for ads, we started on that here.
4. Where people drop off
The last thing: which pages actually lead to contact, and which ones people leave. Check which pages are visited most often, how deep people scroll, and on which page they most often end their visit.
If half your traffic lands on one page and leaves immediately, you have a concrete spot to fix - often it is a matter of load speed, an unclear headline, or no obvious next step. On how slow loading costs you customers, we wrote separately.
A site without measurement is an expense. A site with measurement is an investment you can improve - because you can see what works.
What not to measure at the start
Not every number a tool shows you means something. At the start, skip:
- Raw visits - without the context of source and conversion, it is a feel-good number.
- "Time on site" - a long time can mean engagement, or that someone cannot find something. There is no telling which.
- Bounce rate in isolation - easy to misread and draw the wrong conclusions from.
These metrics are not useless - you just do not start with them.
How to set it up without the hassle
You do not need ten tools. This is enough:
- Google Analytics 4 - free, shows traffic, sources, and behavior on the site.
- One event on form submission and on a click of your phone number - to count real contacts, not guess.
- The habit of looking once a month and comparing with the previous one. Measurement without looking is a waste of time.
That is enough to stop guessing and start seeing.
Where to start
If you have a website but do not know whether or where it earns, start with a free audit - we will check what works, where you are losing contacts, and whether measurement is set up at all. And if you want us to handle it long term - get in touch.