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The minimum you need to measure to know what works.

Visits, followers, clicks, time on page… There are lots of numbers and most of them say nothing about your business. This is the minimum worth measuring on a business website, how to do it while respecting your visitors' privacy, and which questions it should answer every month.

Published
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3 minutes
By
The Big Plum team

In short

  • Measure enquiries, not visits: forms, calls, WhatsApp, bookings and purchases.
  • Every enquiry should say where it came from.
  • In Europe, analytics and advertising need the visitor's permission.
  • A good report fits on one page and answers three questions.
In this note
  1. 01The number that matters
  2. 02What to measure, specifically
  3. 03Where each enquiry comes from
  4. 04Just the tools you need
  5. 05Measuring with permission
  6. 06The report that actually helps
  7. 07What you don't need to measure (yet)

01The number that matters

Visits are a means, not an end. A website with few visits that bring customers is worth more than one with thousands where nobody gets in touch. The number that matters is enquiries: the people who have raised their hand.

Depending on your business, an enquiry is a submitted form, a call, a WhatsApp message, a booking or a purchase. That's the first thing to measure, and what many websites don't.

02What to measure, specifically

For a business website, this is the minimum list:

  • Submitted forms, with a thank-you page or an event that's only recorded when the submission succeeds.
  • Clicks on the phone number and email, especially on mobile.
  • Clicks on WhatsApp, if you offer it.
  • Bookings or purchases, if the website handles them.

And alongside each one, the most important thing: where it came from. Organic Google, an ad, a social network, an email or someone who typed your address directly.

03Where each enquiry comes from

Analytics tools work out quite a lot about where each visit comes from, but not everything. Three habits improve it a lot:

  1. Tag your links. The links in your campaigns, newsletter and social media can carry tags (UTM) that say where they come from.
  2. Connect your ad platforms to your analytics, so you know which campaign brings enquiries and not just clicks.
  3. Ask. An optional “How did you hear about us?” field on the form fills in what the tools can't see, such as a recommendation.

04Just the tools you need

You don't need to build a control room. With these pieces, properly set up, almost everything is answered:

  • Google Analytics 4, with your enquiries marked as key events.
  • Google Search Console, to see which searches bring you visits from Google.
  • Conversions in your ad platforms, if you run campaigns.
  • A place to log every enquiry with its source and how it ended: a CRM or, to start with, a spreadsheet.

That last piece is the one most often forgotten and the one that closes the loop: knowing not just how many enquiries arrived, but how many became customers.

05Measuring with permission

In the European Union, analytics and advertising cookies need the prior consent of the person visiting your website. That means a cookie notice that really blocks those tools until the person accepts, and lets them reject them just as easily.

The result is that your data will never be complete, and that's fine. Google offers a consent mode that adapts what's measured to what each person accepts. What matters isn't counting everyone, but seeing reliable trends and respecting those who say no.

06The report that actually helps

A useful monthly report fits on one page and answers three questions:

  1. How many enquiries have we had this month, and how does it compare with previous months?
  2. Where did they come from?
  3. How many became customers, and where did those come from?

With that you can decide where to invest next month. If your report has twenty pages of charts and doesn't answer these three questions, it isn't a report: it's noise.

Measuring isn't piling up numbers. It's being able to decide next month more clearly than this one.

07What you don't need to measure (yet)

Heatmaps, session recordings, dozens of dashboards… They have their moment, but not before you have the basics. Start with enquiries and where they come from; once that works, you'll know what other questions you want to answer.

In conversion and data we explain how we set it up, from the cookie notice to the monthly report.

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