You had your website built and it went live. Two months have passed. The phone rings now and then, but you have no idea whether the site has anything to do with it. Maybe a hundred people visit every day and all of them leave from the first page. Maybe only ten visit and nine of them call you. Without the numbers you cannot tell which is true.
When you pay for ads, print a brochure or decide to push a new service, you want to decide based on something. Google's free analytics tool answers exactly these questions. In this article I will not walk you through its menus. I will only cover the five numbers a business owner should look at, and which decision each one affects.
What is Google Analytics?
If you are asking what is Google Analytics, my comparison is this: a counter at your website's door, plus a quiet observer. It notes how many people came in, where they came from, which room they looked at, and what they did before leaving. It is a free Google tool. The current version is called Google Analytics 4, but you can simply say "Analytics".
What matters to you is not how it works inside, but what the numbers on screen tell you.
The 5 numbers to look at
- How many people came? This shows how many people visited in a given month. On its own it says little; its value appears when you compare it with last month. If it drops, ask why.
- Where did they come from? Did the visitor arrive from a Google search, social media, a link on another site, or by typing your address directly? This decides where your money and effort should go. If you spend a lot of time on social media and get almost no visitors from it, that is important to know.
- Which pages did they look at? You see which pages people open most. If everyone opens your price page and then leaves, something may be missing there. If a page is never viewed, either nobody can reach it or it is unnecessary.
- Phone or computer? If most of your visitors use a phone, the site must read comfortably on a phone. People looking for a barber, a restaurant or a tradesperson are usually on the go, on their mobile.
- How many called or filled in a form? This is the most important number. A high visitor count looks good, but what earns money for your business is bookings, quote requests and phone calls. For these actions to be counted, a small setting has to be added to the site. That is the expert's job.
A small example. If a hotel owner sees that most visitors arrive on a phone and leave quickly from the room page, they may conclude the problem is not the price but that the page is hard to read on a phone. A dentist who sees that most booking forms come from Google searches might choose to invest in search visibility instead of social media.
Which decision does each number affect?
| Number | Your question | Your decision |
|---|---|---|
| Visitors | Is interest growing or shrinking | Whether to continue the work |
| Where from | Which channel works | Budget and time split |
| Pages viewed | What draws attention | Which page to improve |
| Device | Is mobile dominant | Mobile design priority |
| Calls and forms | Does the site bring business | The site's real value |
What you can check, and what the expert does
What you can check yourself:
- Make sure the account sits under your business's own Google account, so years of data do not end up in someone else's hands.
- Once a month, look at the report summary and write down the five numbers above.
- Compare the phone and form counts with your own records. If Analytics says ten calls and you remember five, ask the expert.
- Ask customers, "How did you find us?" It is the cheapest cross-check.
What the expert does:
- Connects the tool to the site and tests that data arrives correctly.
- Makes sure important actions such as calls, forms and bookings are counted.
- Filters your own visits and those of the people who built the site out of the numbers.
- Explains the numbers in plain language and tells you what to do.
The tool has advanced options too, but a business owner does not need them. These five numbers give most small businesses a sufficient picture.
Cookie consent and personal data
When you collect visitor data you must obtain cookie consent and follow personal data protection rules, and you should work on this together with the person who builds your site. I will not go into the details of the law here.
How Search Console differs from Analytics
These two tools are often confused. Google Search Console describes how much you appear on Google before someone reaches your site. Analytics shows what visitors do after they arrive: where they came from, what they looked at, whether they called. One shows what is outside the door, the other what is inside. I cover Search Console in a separate article.
What to ask the person doing the work
- Is the Analytics account under my Google account, and am I the owner?
- Are phone calls and form submissions being counted?
- Why did my visitor number rise or fall compared with last month?
- Where do most visitors come from, and what does that tell me?
- Based on these numbers, what should we do next month?
Setup is usually a short job. But data is not collected retroactively; it builds from the day of installation. The earlier it is set up, the better. A meaningful comparison needs a few months of data.
Frequently asked questions
Does Analytics cost money?
Basic use is free. What you pay for is the setup and the work of interpreting the numbers.
My visitor count is low. Does that mean my site is bad?
No. For a small business, a few right people are often worth more than hundreds of irrelevant visitors. What matters most is how many of them call you. The misunderstanding I see most often is treating a high visitor count as success. If bookings and calls are low, the crowd is not earning you anything.
Do my own visits get mixed into the numbers?
If the setting is not made, yes, they can. The expert filters them out, which is why numbers can sometimes look higher than they should.
Next step
You cannot improve what you do not measure, but not everything you measure matters. Looking at five numbers and making the right decision is often enough. If you would like to go through your site's data together and talk about what to do, take a look at my SEO services page.