Measuring
, 3 min read
How to tell if your website is working
Most owners judge their website by how it looks. Four numbers you can check for free, once a month, tell you whether it is actually doing its job.
A website can look finished and still do nothing. The only way to know is to look at what people do with it, and you do not need a dashboard full of charts for that. Four numbers, checked once a month, are enough for a small business.
Judge the site by what visitors do, not by whether you still like the design.
One: are people finding it
Open Google Search Console, which is free, and look at the performance report for the last three months. Impressions are how often your pages appeared in search results. Clicks are how often someone chose you. If impressions are near zero, Google is not showing you for anything yet, and nothing else on this list matters until that changes.
Then open the queries tab. These are the actual words people typed. If they are only ever your business name, people who already know you are finding you, and strangers are not.
Two: are the right people arriving
In your analytics, which for most small sites means Google Analytics or a lighter tool like Plausible, look at where visitors come from and which city or country they are in. A salon in Pune with most of its visitors in another state has a site that is being found for the wrong searches.
Three: do they stay long enough to read
Look at how long people spend on your main pages, and how many leave after seeing only one. Some single page visits are fine: someone looked up your phone number and called. But if almost everyone leaves within a few seconds, the top of the page is not telling them they are in the right place.
Four: do they get in touch
This is the number that pays for the site, and it is the one owners most often cannot answer. Count every enquiry that came through the site last month: form submissions, calls from the number on the site, WhatsApp chats started from the button. Then ask the next few customers how they found you, and write the answer down.
- Forms: count the emails the form sent you.
- WhatsApp: a prefilled first message tells you the chat started on the site.
- Calls: ask. It takes five seconds and nothing else measures it as well.
What to change when a number is low
| Low number | Usual cause | First thing to try |
|---|---|---|
| Impressions | Google does not know what the pages are about | Clear page titles naming the service and the town |
| Clicks | The search result is vague | A page description that says what you do and for whom |
| Time on page | The top of the page is unclear or slow | One sentence saying what you do, and smaller images |
| Enquiries | Getting in touch takes effort | A shorter form, and a call or WhatsApp button on every page |
How often to look
Once a month is plenty. Daily numbers on a small site jump around for no reason and will only worry you. Put a reminder on the first of the month, write the four numbers in a note, and compare them with last month. A trend over three months tells you far more than any single week.
Every site we launch has Search Console and analytics connected, in your own name, so these four numbers are yours to read from the first day, whether or not you ever work with us again.