Installing analytics is a twenty-minute job. What separates an account that answers questions from one that just counts visitors is the hour afterwards: recording enquiries as events, filtering out your own visits, connecting search data, and writing down what the numbers looked like before you changed anything.
Why bother at all
Without it you are guessing. Not loosely, but completely: how many people arrive, what they look at, which pages they leave from, and whether the thing you paid for last month made any difference.
The honest counterpoint is that analytics on a small site produces small numbers, and small numbers are noisy. That is a reason to interpret carefully rather than a reason to skip it. Even at modest traffic, it will tell you which pages people actually reach, what proportion arrive on a phone, and whether anything changed after you did something.
The twenty-minute part
- Create the account under an address you control. Not your developer's, not an agency's. You can add them as a user afterwards, and reversing it later means losing your history.
- Add the tracking code to every page. Most platforms have a field for this; on a hand-built site it goes in the shared template.
- Confirm it is recording, by opening your own site and checking the real-time view.
- Check every page is covered, not just the homepage. Pages added later by someone else are the usual gap.
At this point you have visitor counts. That is the part most businesses stop at, and it is the part that produces reports nobody can act on.
The hour that makes it useful
Record enquiries, not just visits
The single most valuable step. Configure the things that represent an actual enquiry as recorded events: a form submission that reached the confirmation page, a tap on your telephone link, a click on your email address, and a completed booking if you take them.
Without this you can see traffic and cannot see results, which means every future question about whether something worked is unanswerable.
Filter out your own visits
On a site with a few hundred visits a month, you and your staff opening it daily is a meaningful share of the traffic, and it lands disproportionately on the pages you happen to check. Excluding your own network takes a few minutes and stops you measuring yourselves.
Connect the search data
Analytics tells you what people did on your site. It does not tell you what they searched to get there. Linking Search Console brings that in, and the query data is the only place you will ever see the words your customers actually use.
Record a baseline
Before changing anything, write down where you are starting: monthly visits, enquiries, the share arriving on a phone, and the top five pages. One paragraph, dated, saved somewhere you will find it.
This is the step nobody takes and the one that makes every later conversation about progress a matter of arithmetic rather than recollection.
What to look at in the first month
Not much, deliberately. Four things.
| Look at | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Enquiries, by source | The only number that connects to revenue. Everything else is context. |
| Which pages people land on | Usually not the homepage, which changes what you should be improving |
| Share arriving on a phone | Commonly the majority, and it should shape every design decision |
| Pages with traffic and no enquiries | Either the wrong audience or a page with no way to act on it |
What not to worry about
Several metrics attract attention out of proportion to their usefulness on a small site.
- Total visits as a headline. More visitors who do not enquire is not progress.
- Time on page, which is measured awkwardly and means less than it appears to.
- Percentages calculated on small numbers. A rate based on eight enquiries swings wildly and most of that movement is noise.
- Week-on-week comparisons. Compare months or quarters. Weeks are mostly weather and coincidence.
What it will never tell you
Worth knowing at the start so the numbers are not over-read.
It cannot see phone calls, beyond recording that someone tapped a link. It cannot connect a visit on a phone at lunchtime to a call from a landline that evening. A share of visitors block measurement entirely, so real traffic is higher than reported. And anything arriving without an identifiable source lands in a general bucket that is frequently misread as brand strength.
None of which makes it useless. It makes it directional. Trends over months are reliable, individual figures are approximate, and the thing that keeps it honest is asking callers how they found you, which covers the half no script can see.
The setup worth having on day one
Account in your own name. Code on every page. Enquiries recorded as events. Your own visits filtered out. Search data connected. A dated baseline written down.
That is an hour and a half, once, and it is the difference between an account that answers questions and one that produces a number nobody knows what to do with.
Frequently asked questions
Whose account should analytics be set up under?
An address you control, with your developer or agency added as a user. Reversed, you lose your entire measurement history when that relationship ends, and that history is your only baseline.
What should I track besides visits?
The things that represent an actual enquiry: form submissions that reached a confirmation page, taps on your telephone link, clicks on your email address, and completed bookings. Without those you can see traffic and not results.
Should I exclude my own visits?
Yes. On a site with a few hundred monthly visits, you and your staff checking it daily is a meaningful share, and it concentrates on the pages you happen to open.
What should I look at in the first month?
Enquiries by source, which pages people land on, the share arriving on a phone, and any page with traffic but no enquiries. Four things, not forty.
Why do my percentages swing so much?
Small numbers. A rate calculated on eight enquiries moves substantially when the next month brings ten, and most of that movement is noise rather than change.
What can analytics not tell me?
Whether a phone call connected or became work, journeys across two devices, and anything from visitors who block measurement. Asking callers how they found you covers the part no script can see.
West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.
Analytics installed and telling you nothing useful?
We set it up so enquiries are recorded rather than just visits, and give you a dated baseline you can measure everything against.
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