Your website is one of the hardest-working parts of your business. It’s open 24 hours a day; it’s often the first impression people get of you, and for many Waterford businesses, it’s where most new enquiries begin.
But how do you know if it’s actually doing its job?
Lots of business owners launch a website and then never look at how it’s performing. Others check their visitor numbers now and again but aren’t sure what they mean or what to do with them. Without the right information, it’s impossible to tell what’s working, what isn’t and where you’re losing potential customers.
The good news is that you don’t need to be a data expert to understand how your website is performing. You just need to know which numbers are worth paying attention to.
Most of the metrics below can be found for free in Google Analytics 4 and Google Search Console. So, in this article, we’re going to run through six website metrics that matter and what they can tell you about your site.
1. Website Traffic
Traffic is the number of people visiting your website, and it’s usually the first thing business owners look at. In Google Analytics, you’ll see this as Users (the number of people who visited) and Sessions (the number of visits they made).
Traffic on its own doesn’t tell the whole story, but it’s a useful starting point. A steady increase over time shows that more people are finding your business online. A sudden drop could point to a problem, such as a technical issue with your site or a fall in your Google rankings.
Rather than checking day by day, compare month on month and year on year. This gives you a far clearer picture and takes seasonal ups and downs into account.
2. Traffic Sources
Knowing how many people visit your site is useful. Knowing where they come from is even more valuable.
Google Analytics breaks your traffic down into channels, including:
- Organic Search: people who found you through Google or another search engine
- Direct: people who typed your web address in or used a bookmark
- Organic Social: visitors from Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and other platforms
- Paid Search and Paid Social: visitors from your Google Ads or Meta Ads
- Referral: people who clicked a link to your site on another website
- Email: visitors from your email newsletters
This shows you which of your marketing efforts are actually bringing people to your website. If you’re spending time on social media but it sends very few visitors, or your Google traffic is growing every month, that’s valuable information for deciding where to focus your time and budget.
3. Engagement Rate
Getting people onto your website is only the first step. You also want them to stick around.
In Google Analytics 4, engagement rate shows the percentage of visits where someone actually engaged with your site. A visit counts as engaged if the person stayed for more than 10 seconds, viewed more than one page or completed a key action, such as filling in a form.
You may also have heard of bounce rate, which is the opposite: the percentage of visits that weren’t engaged.
A low engagement rate can be a sign that something is putting people off. Your page might be loading slowly, your content might not match what they were searching for, or your design might be confusing on mobile. Look at engagement rate page by page to find the ones that need the most attention.
4. Your Most Popular Pages
The Pages and screens report in Google Analytics shows you which pages get the most views and how long people spend on them.
This tells you what your visitors are most interested in. If a particular service page or blog post is getting lots of attention, make sure it’s working hard for you, with clear information, strong calls to action and links to related pages.
It also helps you spot pages that aren’t pulling their weight. If an important service page gets very few visitors, it might need better content, stronger SEO or more links from other parts of your site.
5. Conversions and Conversion Rate
This is the metric that matters most, because it shows whether your website is actually bringing in business.
A conversion is any action you want a visitor to take. That could be submitting a contact form, calling you by tapping your phone number, booking an appointment, signing up for your newsletter or making a purchase. In Google Analytics 4, these are set up as key events.
Your conversion rate is the percentage of visitors who complete one of these actions. If 1,000 people visit your site in a month and 20 of them send an enquiry, your conversion rate is 2%.
If your traffic is high but your conversions are low, your website isn’t doing a good enough job of turning visitors into customers. Clearer calls to action, simpler forms, stronger reviews and testimonials, and a more focused page layout can all help.
Make sure your key events are set up properly. Without them, you’re missing the most important part of the picture.
6. Page Speed and Core Web Vitals
A slow website costs you customers. If your pages take too long to load, many people will leave before they’ve even seen what you offer, especially on mobile.
Google measures website performance through a set of metrics called Core Web Vitals:
- Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): how quickly the main content of your page loads. Aim for 2.5 seconds or less.
- Interaction to Next Paint (INP): how quickly your page responds when someone taps or clicks
- Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): how much your page jumps around while it’s loading
You can check these for free in Google Search Console or by entering your web address into Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool. Speed doesn’t just affect your visitors’ experience either. It’s also one of the factors Google considers when deciding how to rank your website.
Start Measuring What Matters
A website that looks great but doesn’t bring in enquiries isn’t doing its job. By keeping an eye on your traffic, traffic sources, engagement rate, popular pages, conversions and page speed, you’ll know exactly how your website is performing and where it needs to improve.
Check these metrics at least once a month and look for trends over time rather than reacting to every small change.
If you’re not sure how your website is performing, or you’d like help setting up Google Analytics and tracking the right things, get in touch with Whelan Web Design. As a Waterford web design agency, we build websites that look great and deliver real results for local businesses.
