Traffic is nice. Enquiries pay the bills. Here's how to track the actions that matter on a small business website, step by step and without jargon.
Most small business sites can tell you how many people visited last month. Far fewer can tell you how many of those people rang, filled in a form or messaged on WhatsApp. That second number is the one that matters.
Write down the three or four actions that mean someone is a real prospect. Typically: submitting the contact form, tapping a phone number, tapping a WhatsApp or email link, and perhaps booking or buying. These become your conversions.
In Google Analytics 4, each action is recorded as an event. A form submission should fire an event on the thank-you state or confirmation, not on the button press, so failed submissions aren't counted. Link clicks for tel:, mailto: and WhatsApp links can be tracked with Google Tag Manager or by your developer adding a small snippet. Then mark those events as key events in GA4.
Use GA4's real-time view or DebugView, perform each action on your own site, and check the event appears once. Duplicate or missing events are the most common tracking bugs. Remember that consent settings may stop events recording for people who decline cookies.
Once events are recording, look at which sources and pages lead to enquiries. Do more of what works and stop paying for what doesn't. Phone calls from the website still need a note at the other end - ask callers how they found you. Our guide on analytics that matter goes further on which numbers to ignore.
We can configure conversion tracking and a simple monthly report that shows enquiries, not just visits.
Start a conversation →No. Privacy-focused tools such as Plausible or Fathom can track simple conversions with less setup and fewer consent issues, though they offer less depth.
Not from the website alone. A dedicated tracking number or simply asking callers how they heard of you is the practical approach.
Give it a few weeks to build a picture, longer if you only get a handful of enquiries a month.
