A visitor tracker goes on almost every site. But often that is where it ends: there are traffic charts, but no answer to the main question of where requests come from. After a couple of months of ads, nobody can tell which channel works and which one just spends money.
Below is what to set up at launch so analytics answers business questions instead of only drawing nice charts.
A tracker on your own account
Google Analytics, Yandex Metrica, or another service should be created on your account. The developer and the marketer get guest access. If the tracker lives on someone else’s account, you lose the whole history when you change contractors.
One site, one main tracker. Several similar systems added by different people at different times only muddle the figures and slow the page down.
Goals: what counts as a result
Visits on their own say little. What matters is how many people did what the site exists for. That is what goals are for:
- A successful form submission, not just a button press
- A tap on the phone number or a messenger link
- A jump to the Telegram bot
- A placed order or a payment, if it is a store
The “form sent” goal should fire only when the request has actually gone through. Otherwise the figures will drift away from real enquiries. How to test the form itself is covered in the note on missing form requests.
Tags on ad links
To see which channel brings clients, links in ads, newsletters, and social posts get UTM tags. These are a few parameters at the end of the address that tell analytics the source. Agree on one naming scheme, or the same campaign will show up in reports under different names.
Consent and personal data
Trackers use cookies and collect data about visitors. In many countries this requires a notice or the visitor’s consent, plus a data policy on the site. The rules differ between countries, so check them for your audience, and set up the consent banner so it actually respects the person’s choice.
What to look at
Analytics has plenty of reports, but for a small site a few questions once a week or month are usually enough:
- How many requests there were and from which sources
- Which pages people open most often before sending a request
- How many visitors come from a phone and whether they leave right away
- What changed after edits to the site or the start of an ad campaign
If the figures change sharply for no visible reason, first check that the form and the tracker work, and only then look for the cause in the ads.
What else to check on launch day is described in the note on moving to a new site. If you want goals set up on your site, use the contact form.