How to tell if your website is working: measure enquiries, not page views
Traffic is easy to report and easy to misread. Here is how to set up Google Analytics and Search Console so you can see the number that matters: enquiries from the website.
Ask most business owners how their website is doing and the answer is a traffic number. Traffic matters, but it is not the goal. A website for a service business is working when it brings in enquiries: quote requests, calls, bookings and applications.
Decide what counts as a result
Write down the actions that matter to your business. For most service firms that is a form submission, a click on the phone number, a WhatsApp message or a booking. These are the numbers to track and improve.
Track enquiries in Google Analytics 4
Google Analytics 4 records events. Make sure each form sends an event when it is submitted, and that clicks on phone and email links are recorded too. Then mark those events as key events in GA4. From then on you can see how many enquiries the site brings each month, and which pages and channels they come from.
Read Search Console for search performance
Google Search Console shows how your site appears in Google: impressions, clicks, average position and the searches people used. Watch the trend over months rather than days. Rising impressions usually come first; clicks and enquiries follow.
A short monthly review
- Enquiries: how many, and from which pages?
- Search clicks: up or down compared with the same month last year?
- Top searches: which questions bring people in, and do you have a page that answers each one well?
- Problem pages: busy pages with no enquiries are the best place to improve.
- Speed and errors: Core Web Vitals and the Pages report in Search Console.
A smaller number of the right visitors who become enquiries beats a big number of the wrong ones.
Give it time
A new website or a new page usually takes a few months to settle in Google. Judge it on the trend over a quarter, not on the first week. Keep adding useful content, ask happy customers for reviews and build genuine links, and the numbers that matter will follow.
Every website we build comes with enquiry tracking set up. Read about our custom WordPress development, or get in touch with a question.
StackMIME designs and builds custom WordPress websites for service businesses and the agencies that serve them, in English and Arabic, from Islamabad and Riyadh.
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