Website analytics: the five numbers a small business should watch
You do not need forty reports. You need to know whether people are finding you, where from, what they look at, and whether they get in touch. Here is how to see that in ten minutes a month.
Updated
Open Google Analytics for the first time and you are met with engagement rates, event counts, cohorts and a dozen charts with no obvious relationship to whether anyone phoned you. Most business owners close it and never return, which means they are making decisions about their website and marketing with no information at all. You do not need forty reports. You need five numbers, checked monthly, trending in the right direction. This guide names them, shows where to find them, and covers simpler tools if Google’s is more than you want.
The five numbers
1. How many people visited
Monthly visitors (GA4 calls them “users”). On its own this number means little, and a lot of bad marketing is sold on making it go up. But its trend matters: if it halves, something broke or Google changed its mind about you; if it doubles after a campaign, the campaign reached people. Compare with the previous month and with the same month last year, because most businesses are seasonal.
2. Where they came from
Split by source: Google search (“organic”), Google Business Profile, paid ads, social media, direct (typed your address or used a bookmark), and referrals from other websites. This is the number that tells you which marketing is working. A business spending on Facebook that gets 90 per cent of its visitors from Google search has learned something useful. One that gets most visitors from a directory listing it was about to cancel has learned something too.
3. Which pages they looked at
Your top ten pages by views. Expect the homepage first; look at what comes next. If your most profitable service page is nowhere in the list, it needs to be easier to find or better ranked. If a three-year-old blog post is your second most visited page, it deserves a refresh and a clear link to the service it relates to. Also note which pages visitors leave from; a contact page with a high exit rate and few form submissions means the form is putting people off.
4. How many enquiries the site produced
Form submissions, phone taps on mobile, booking completions, email link clicks. This is the number the website exists for, and it is the one most analytics setups do not track at all, because it needs a little configuration. Every site we build counts these as conversions from day one. If yours does not, that is the single most valuable fix in this article.
5. Conversion rate
Enquiries divided by visitors, as a percentage. This number separates “more traffic” from “a better website”. If 1,000 people visit and 20 enquire, that is 2 per cent. Doubling the traffic with ads gets you 40 enquiries for a lot of money. Improving the site to 4 per cent gets you 40 enquiries for free, forever. Watch this number per traffic source too: visitors from your Google Business Profile might convert at 10 per cent while visitors from a Facebook post convert at 0.5, which should change where you spend your time.
Where to find them in Google Analytics 4
If GA4 is already on your site, you can get the five numbers without learning the rest of it.
| Number | Where in GA4 |
|---|---|
| Visitors | Reports → Acquisition → Traffic acquisition. The “Users” total for the date range. |
| Where from | Same report, the “Session default channel group” rows: Organic Search, Direct, Paid Search, Organic Social, Referral. |
| Top pages | Reports → Engagement → Pages and screens. Sort by Views. |
| Enquiries | Reports → Engagement → Conversions (or “Key events” in newer accounts). Only appears once form and phone events are set up as conversions. |
| Conversion rate | Traffic acquisition report, “Session key event rate” column, per channel. |
Set the date range to the last full month and tick “compare” with the previous period. You can also build a custom report with just these, or ask whoever manages your site to send a monthly summary; we send one to clients on our hosting plans.
The tool most small businesses forget: Search Console
Google Search Console is free, separate from Analytics, and arguably more useful for a local business. It shows:
- Which searches showed your site, how many times, how many clicks, and your average position for each. This is where you discover you rank 11th for “dog groomer Chelmsford”, one place off the first page, and that a small improvement to that page could double its traffic.
- Technical problems Google found: pages it could not read, mobile issues, security warnings. It emails you when something breaks.
- Whether your pages are indexed at all. New sites, and sites after a redesign, sometimes have pages Google has not found.
Setting it up takes ten minutes and involves verifying you own the domain. If you are a WebProud client it is already done and you have access. If not, do it this week; it costs nothing and the data starts accumulating only from the day you add it.
Simpler alternatives to Google Analytics
GA4 is free, but it is built for large organisations, it keeps changing, and because it uses cookies and sends data to Google, UK rules require a consent banner before it loads, which means it misses the visitors who click “reject”. For a small business that just wants the five numbers, a privacy-friendly tool is often a better fit:
- Plausible and Fathom: one-screen dashboards showing visitors, sources, top pages and goals. Around £7 to £12 a month. No cookies, so usually no consent banner needed, which means more complete data. The script is tiny, so your site stays fast.
- Matomo: a fuller GA-style tool you can self-host, better for businesses who want the detail without the data leaving their control.
- Cloudflare Web Analytics: free and basic, enough for visitor counts and top pages if your site is behind Cloudflare.
For the sites we build and look after, we now use our own cookie-free analytics, and the five numbers sit in your WebProud client portal next to your project, invoices and requests: visitors, where they came from, top pages, and enquiries (forms sent, phone and email taps) with the conversion rate worked out for you. No extra login, no consent banner, and no data sent to Google. Nothing stops you running GA4 alongside it if an ad agency needs the Google data.
Numbers to ignore
- Bounce rate / engagement rate. Someone who reads your opening hours and leaves satisfied is a “bounce”. It tells you little for a small business site.
- Time on page. Measured unreliably and easily misread. A short time on the contact page might mean the form was quick to fill in.
- Real-time visitors. Fun, meaningless.
- Vanity totals in agency reports. “Impressions up 300 per cent” means Google showed your listing more often; it does not mean anyone clicked. Ask for clicks and enquiries.
- Anything daily. Small sites have small numbers, and small numbers jump around. Monthly is the shortest useful period.
Making the numbers trustworthy
A few setup details decide whether the numbers mean anything:
- Exclude yourself. You and your staff visiting the site every day inflate everything. Filter out your office IP address, or use the tool’s “ignore my visits” option.
- Track enquiries properly. Forms should record a conversion when successfully submitted, not when the page loads. Phone numbers should be tappable links that record a click. Bookings should fire on confirmation.
- Tag your own links. When you put the website address in an email newsletter, a Facebook post or a printed flyer, add a tracking parameter or use a short link, so those visits are attributed correctly rather than lumped into “direct”.
- Keep one property. After redesigns it is common to find two or three analytics accounts half-installed. One tool, one account, installed on every page.
Turning numbers into decisions
The point of all this is to answer practical questions:
- Should I keep paying for this directory? Look at referrals from it and whether those visitors enquire.
- Is the blog worth the effort? Look at organic visitors to blog posts and whether they go on to service pages or enquire.
- Why did enquiries drop in March? Visitors steady but conversions down points at the site (a broken form, a slow page). Visitors down and conversions steady points at search or seasonality.
- Which service should I promote? The one whose page converts best relative to its traffic.
If you are not sure your site is counting enquiries, or you have an analytics account nobody has opened since 2022, ask us to look. Setting up clean tracking and a monthly five-number summary is a small job, and it is the difference between guessing and knowing. Our guide to why websites get no enquiries is the natural next read once the numbers tell you where the problem is.
Quick answers
Do I need Google Analytics for a small business website?
You need some analytics, but not necessarily Google’s. GA4 is free and powerful but complicated and requires a consent banner in the UK. Privacy-friendly tools like Plausible or Fathom show the five numbers that matter on one screen for a few pounds a month, and many do not need consent. Either is fine; using neither means flying blind.
What is a good conversion rate for a small business website?
For local service businesses, 2 to 5 per cent of visitors becoming enquiries (calls, forms, bookings) is typical, and well-built sites with clear calls to action can do better. The number depends heavily on where visitors come from: people searching your business name convert far more often than people arriving from a blog post.
What is the difference between Google Analytics and Search Console?
Analytics tells you what people do once they are on your site. Search Console tells you how they found you on Google: which searches showed your site, how often it was clicked, and any technical problems Google sees. You want both, and Search Console is the one small businesses most often forget.
How often should I check my website stats?
Once a month is enough for most small businesses, looking at the same five numbers compared with the previous month and the same month last year. Checking daily just shows noise. Set a recurring reminder and spend ten minutes.
