How to measure whether your website earns — Google Analytics

You have a website, but you don’t know how many people visit it, where they come from, or whether it brings in customers? That’s like running a shop with the windows blocked — you can’t see who walks in, who walks out, or why. Google Analytics is a free tool that gives you the full picture — here’s how to use it.

What Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is

Google Analytics 4 is the latest version of Google’s traffic analysis system. It’s free, powerful and used by millions of businesses worldwide. GA4 shows you: how many people visit your site, where they come from (Google, Facebook, direct), what they do on the site (which pages they browse, how long they stay) and whether they complete key actions (submit a form, call, click on pricing).

How to install GA4 — step by step

• Step 1: Go to analytics.google.com and sign in with a Google account
• Step 2: Click “Start measuring” and fill in the account and property name
• Step 3: Enter the site address and choose “Web”
• Step 4: Copy the generated tracking code (Measurement ID: G-XXXXXXXXXX)
• Step 5: Paste the code into your site (in the head section) or use Google Tag Manager

From the moment of installation, data starts being collected. The first reliable numbers will appear after 24–48 hours.

What to measure — 5 key metrics

• Sessions: How many times someone visited your site. 500 sessions/month is a solid base for a small business
• Traffic sources: Where visitors come from — organic Google, ads, social media, direct. This tells you what’s working
• Top pages: Which subpages are visited most. If pricing is #1, customers are interested
• Bounce rate: What percentage of visitors leave after seeing a single page. Above 70% = a problem
• Conversions: How many people submitted a form, clicked a phone number, clicked “Order”. This is the MOST IMPORTANT metric

How to set up conversion tracking

A conversion is an action that has value for your business. For a business website, that’s usually: submitting a contact form, clicking on a phone number, clicking on an email address, navigating to the pricing page. In GA4 you configure this through “Events”. Every event can be marked as a conversion. That way you know exactly how many enquiries your site generates.

How to read the reports — in plain language

You don’t need to be a data analyst. Once a month check: whether traffic is growing or shrinking (month-on-month comparison), where most of your customers come from (and reinforce that channel), which pages have the highest bounce rate (and improve them), how many conversions the site generated (that’s your ROI). 15 minutes a month is enough to make better decisions.

Google Search Console — the complement to Analytics

Install Google Search Console as well (it’s free). It shows: what queries your site appears for on Google, your position for each query, how many people click on your site from the results, what errors your site has (which need fixing). GA4 + Search Console = the full picture of your site’s visibility and effectiveness.