Most business owners either never look at their website analytics, or look at the wrong number and feel good or bad about it for no reason. A local business website has one job — produce enquiries — so the metrics worth tracking are the ones that tell you whether it's doing that, and why.
Here are the five that matter, and the ones to ignore.
The Five That Matter
1. Leads per month (calls + forms + messages)
The headline number. Every phone call, contact form, WhatsApp message, and booking that came from the website. Track it monthly and watch the trend. This is the number your website exists to move.
Where: GA4 "key events" for form submits + a call-tracking number, or just a tally you keep.
2. Phone calls specifically
For local service businesses, calls are often more than half of all conversions. If you only count form submissions, you're measuring half your business. At minimum, track taps on your tel: link in GA4; for full attribution (which calls came from which source), a tool like CallRail gives you a trackable number.
Where: GA4 event on tel: clicks, or a call-tracking tool.
3. Conversion rate
Leads ÷ visitors. If 500 people visit and 15 get in touch, that's 3%. This tells you whether the problem is traffic (not enough visitors) or the site (visitors arriving but not acting). A typical local business site converts 1–4%; below 1% means the page isn't doing its job.
Where: GA4 shows this directly once key events are set up.
4. Where your traffic comes from
Organic search, Google Business Profile, direct, social, referral. This tells you what's working and where to put effort. If 80% is organic and Google Business Profile, your local SEO is doing the heavy lifting — protect it.
Where: GA4 "Traffic acquisition" report.
5. Which pages bring in and convert visitors
Your top landing pages, and which ones lead to enquiries. Often a single service page does most of the work — that's the one to keep improving. A page with lots of visits and zero enquiries needs a better call to action.
Where: GA4 "Landing page" report, cross-referenced with your key events.
The Ones to Ignore (Mostly)
Total pageviews / sessions on their own
Traffic with no context feels like progress but isn't. 10,000 visitors and 5 enquiries is a worse month than 800 visitors and 30 enquiries.
Bounce rate (the old metric)
GA4 replaced it with engagement rate for good reason. Someone who lands on your contact page, gets your number, and calls you has "bounced" — and also converted. Look at engagement rate instead, and only as a rough health check.
Average session duration
Longer isn't better. If someone finds your price and phone number in 20 seconds and calls, that's a fast, successful visit.
Social media followers
Unless social is a real channel for you, follower count has close to zero relationship with website enquiries.
A Simple Monthly Routine
- Once a month, note: leads this month, calls this month, conversion rate.
- Glance at traffic sources — anything change sharply?
- Check your top landing page — is it converting? If a high-traffic page isn't, that's your project for next month.
- Write the three numbers in a spreadsheet. After six months you'll see the trend, which is the only thing that matters.
Set Up Once, Read Forever
Every website we build at LocalPageHQ comes with analytics configured properly — form and call events tracked as key events from day one, so the numbers above are there when you want them, without a setup project.
We'll build a free preview of your site using your real business details, and show you what you'd be able to measure.
Request your free mockup here →
