Which Half of the Enquiries You Cannot See

What analytics can see

Actions taken on the website, by a browser running the tracking script.

That is the whole scope, and it is narrower than the impression a report gives.

A form submitted on the site is visible. A phone number tapped on the site is visible.

Everything else that produces work for the business happens somewhere the script is not.

What it cannot see

• A call from a number written down and dialled later.
• A call from a van, a board, or a card.
• A recommendation passed between neighbours.
• Somebody walking in, for a business with premises.
• An email sent from an address copied off the site.
• A message through a listing or a social platform.

The first is the largest for most trades. Somebody reads the number on a desktop, writes it on an envelope, and phones from the kitchen an hour later.

That enquiry came from the website and appears in no report about it.

How large the gap usually is

Larger than businesses expect, and the only way to know is counting.

A business measuring form submissions and phone taps has a number. A business counting every enquiry that arrives has a different, larger number.

The ratio between those two varies enormously by trade, by customer age, and by how prominent the phone number is.

Which means published figures about typical proportions are not useful. Your own count is.

Thirty enquiries recorded by hand tells you your ratio, and that ratio is what makes the analytics number interpretable.

A worked example

A business whose analytics showed four conversions in a month.

Their enquiry record, kept by hand for the first time, showed eleven enquiries.

Of the seven analytics missed: three phoned from a number noted earlier, two came from the van, one walked in, and one was a referral who had checked the website first and then phoned.

The website had contributed to at least five of the seven and was credited with none of them.

Which changed the assessment of the site entirely, and it also changed what they did next: rather than rebuilding it, they made the number more prominent and easier to tap.

The four became six over the following months, and the eleven became fourteen.

Why this matters for decisions

Because the invisible enquiries are not distributed evenly.

A change that helps somebody phone from a phone shows up in analytics. A change that helps somebody read a number and dial it later does not.

Which means judging a site change by tracked conversions systematically undervalues anything helping the offline route.

Making a phone number larger and clearer is exactly that kind of change, and a business reading only its analytics may conclude it did nothing.

The enquiry record catches it and nothing else does.

The assisted enquiry

A category that sits between visible and invisible, and it is larger than either.

Somebody sees the van, searches the name, reads three pages, and phones from the number on the site.

The van created the awareness, the website did the persuading, and the phone call is where the business hears about it.

Analytics may record the visit and will not record the call. The van is invisible to everything.

Which means the enquiry had at least three contributing steps and any single attribution to one of them is wrong.

The practical response is not solving attribution, which is not solvable at this scale. It is asking, recording what people say, and accepting that the answer is approximate.

Closing the gap

Partially, using several imperfect methods.

Asking every enquiry how they found you, which is the most reliable and requires discipline.

A tracked phone number used only on the website, which attributes calls precisely and costs a monthly fee.

A distinct short web address on printed material and vehicles, which captures a fraction.

And noting the source on every job record, which builds the picture over time without any additional tools.

The first and the last together cost nothing at all and are more accurate than anything technical you could install.

The counter-case

Where the gap is small.

An online shop, where the transaction happens on the site and is recorded completely.

A business whose customers are younger and overwhelmingly mobile, where tapping is the default and writing a number down is unusual.

And a service booked entirely online, where there is no offline route to miss.

For a local trade serving homeowners over fifty, the gap is at its widest, and that is exactly the audience most likely to note a number and phone later.

Call tracking, honestly assessed

The technical solution to the largest part of the gap, and it has real costs.

A tracked number displayed only on the website routes through a service that records which calls came from there, then connects normally.

What it gives you: precise attribution of calls to the site, and in some configurations to the specific source that brought somebody there.

What it costs: a monthly fee, a number that differs from the one on your van and your invoices, and a dependency on a third party for your main enquiry route.

That last point deserves weight. A business whose phone number runs through a service is exposed if the service fails or the relationship ends.

For a business spending substantially on advertising and needing to attribute calls to campaigns, it earns its cost. For a local trade with modest spend, asking people is cheaper and nearly as good.

What not to conclude

Two mistakes this leads to.

That analytics is useless, which it is not. It measures a real subset accurately and is useful for trends within that subset.

And that the website is not working, which is the conclusion a business draws when it compares four tracked conversions against its actual enquiry volume.

The site may be producing most of those eleven and receiving credit for four.

Which is why the enquiry record matters more than any configuration: it is the only measurement that covers everything.

What to do

1. Count every enquiry for one month, by hand.
2. Ask each one how they found you.
3. Compare that total against your tracked conversions.
4. Note the ratio.
5. Use it to interpret the analytics figure afterwards.
6. Repeat the count annually.

The fourth is the actual deliverable. Once you know that tracked conversions represent roughly a third of your real enquiries, the analytics figure becomes useful rather than misleading.

How to keep that record is covered in counting enquiries instead of visits.

Frequently asked questions

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.