How to measure website results: what to count, where to look and what to do about it

Your website is working if it brings in inquiries from people who didn't know you: WhatsApp messages, calls, form submissions or emails. Visits, likes and design only matter to the extent they lead there. To know for sure you need two things: count those leads by where they came from, and use Search Console and your visitor stats to see which searches and pages produce them.

You don't need to be technical. You need to decide what you'll count, set it up once and look at it regularly. Here's how I approach it with the sites I build.

First, decide what “working” means for your business

It sounds obvious and almost nobody does it. For a clinic, working means appointment requests. For a manufacturer, quote requests from companies with real specs. For an online store, sales. For an accounting firm, new clients reaching out, not just the existing ones.

Pick one or two actions you really care about, and those are what you measure. Measure everything and you end up staring at a dashboard full of numbers that don't tell you what to do.

How to count the leads your website brings in

The most useful thing is knowing how many inquiries came from the website rather than Instagram, a referral or a sign on the street. A few simple ways:

• WhatsApp with a prewritten message: the button on your site opens a message that starts a certain way (“Hi! I saw your website and…”). When it arrives like that, you know where it came from. If each page has its own message, you even know which page they were on.
• Button clicks: visitor stats can count every tap on “Call,” “WhatsApp” or “Send.” They won't tell you if you closed the sale, but they show which pages get people to reach out.
• Forms that record their source: each submission is saved with the page it came from.
• The old standby: “How did you hear about us?” Write the answer down in a spreadsheet or your system. It's simple and it always works.

Search Console: which searches show your site

Search Console is Google's free tool for site owners. The most valuable part is the performance report: which searches made your site appear, how many times you showed up, and how many times people clicked. Bing has its own equivalent, and it's worth setting up both.

I always check three things. First, whether searches for what you sell show up (“plumber in [town]”, “horse stalls”) or only your business name. If people only find you by name, Google doesn't connect you with your service yet. Second, which pages get the clicks; sometimes it's not the page you expected. Third, searches where you show up a lot but hardly anyone clicks. That usually calls for a clearer title or a description that answers what they're looking for.

If your site is new, you may see almost nothing at first. That's normal; I describe those early weeks in what happens after your website launches.

Visitor stats: where people come from and what they read

Visitor stats (Google Analytics or a similar tool) show what happens inside the site: where people came from (Google, Instagram, a link shared on WhatsApp, an ad), which device they used and which pages they went through.

The useful part isn't total visits. It's matching traffic sources to leads. If Instagram sends lots of visitors who never reach out and Google sends a few who do, that's a decision about where to put your effort. And if nearly everyone arrives on a phone, your site has to be designed for phones first.

What you see, what it usually means, what to try

A short check-in once a month

You don't need to look every day; weekly numbers bounce around for all kinds of reasons. Once a month, answer three questions: How many leads came from the website? Which searches and pages brought them? What one change will I try this month? Write down the change and the date, so next month you'll know whether it helped.

If a few months go by and the leads still aren't there, I go over the usual causes in why your website isn't bringing in customers. If what's missing is a well-built contact button, that's in WhatsApp button on your website. And for businesses whose site feeds a sales process, the same idea applies to quotes: on the Estructuras 3D blog I wrote about getting qualified leads with a 3D quoting tool, where one detailed inquiry is worth more than a pile of anonymous visits.

How I set it up

On the sites I build, I set up the Google and Bing tools, make the contact buttons count every click, and prewrite the WhatsApp message for each page. Then I walk you through it on a video call, so you don't depend on me to know how things are going. If you already have a site and want me to review it, I do that too. I quote each project separately; you can see what I do in services.

Frequently asked questions