What Website Analytics Should I Track To Improve Business Performance?

Ella Pybus | 8 September, 2025 | 5 minute read | Blog, Digital Marketing, SEO

If you’ve been wondering ways to grow your business through your website’s effectiveness, chances are you’ve come across a lot of metrics and reports. From tracking bounce rates to analysing conversion paths, website analytics covers it all.

Whether you’re trying to increase leads, improve your ecommerce funnel, or justify your latest ad spend, knowing what website analytics to track is the first real step to success. 

This blog will walk you through which metrics actually matter depending on your goals, how to understand what phase you’re in right now, and what’s at stake if you don’t start to track what your users are doing on your site. 

If you’re unsure what website analytics are, it may be beneficial for you to read this blog first: What is website analytics – and do you really need it?

Why Website Analytics Matter More Than Ever

Tracking the right website analytics gives you insights into what’s working, what’s not and where you should focus your marketing budget next. The data is the difference between running campaigns that convert and wasting money on strategies that don’t. 

Analytics helps you:

• Understand user behaviour (e.g. where users drop off)
• Improve user experience and site structure 
• Validate or question the ROI from a campaign 
• Improve content performance 
• Identify issues with checkout funnels

If you already have Google Analytics set up, you should run an audit first to investigate if it is working properly. Discover how to do this in our recent blog: How to do a Google Analytics audit. 

What Happens If You Don’t Track the Right Metrics? 

When you focus on metrics like pageviews or followers, you might miss that users aren’t converting, or worse, abandoning your site in frustration. 

Without clarity on what matters:

• You waste time reporting on irrelevant numbers 
• You can’t figure out why your leads are not coming through 
• Your digital marketing feels like guesswork 
• Your team can’t prioritise improvements confidently

Knowing what to track gives you and your team something to focus on and improve on to ensure your website is converting correctly.  

Stop guessing and start tracking the metrics that actually grow your business. Book your GA4 audit today and get clear, actionable insights to improve your performance.

Core Website Analytics Metrics to Track by Goal

Here’s a breakdown, based on common business objectives:

Goal: Lead Generation 

If your site is meant to generate leads (form fills, demo requests, quote submissions), you’ll want to track:

• Conversion rate – what percentage of visitors are turning into leads?
• Form completion rate – are users dropping off halfway through?
• Traffic Source Attribution – where are your leads actually coming from?
• Session duration – are people engaging with the right pages?
• Landing page performance – which page converts the best? Why may this be?

Goal: E-commerce Revenue

Selling online? Focus on:

• Abandonment rate – where are people dropping off?
• Average order value – how much is each transaction worth?
• Top performing products/pages – what drives the most sales?
• Returning customers – are people coming back to buy again?

Goal: Brand awareness or content marketing

If your strategy revolves around content or SEO visibility:

• Organic traffic growth – are you ranking and attracting new visitors?
• Conversion rate – what percentage of visitors are turning into leads?
• Bounce rate and time spent on page – are people actually reading your content?
• Top Exit Pages – What pages cause people to leave your site?

Tools That Help You Track Website Analytics (Without Getting Lost)

There are tools out there to help you track your website analytics properly. 

The best tools we recommend:

• Google Analytics 4 (GA4) – this tracks users’ journeys, conversions, and attribution.
• Hotjar or Microsoft Clarity –  Visual tools that show heatmaps, session recordings, and user behaviour.
• HubSpot – All-in-one marketing platform with built-in analytics for lead gen and automation.
• SEMrush / Ahrefs – Great for SEO-focused analytics, keyword rankings, and competitor insights.
• Looker Studio – For custom dashboards and reports.

If you’re just starting out, GA4 and Semrush together can give you powerful visibility into both numbers and human behaviour.

Our final thoughts

Tracking the right website analytics isn’t just about reporting, it’s about making smarter decisions. By focusing on the metrics that align with your business goals, you can improve user experience and ultimately drive more revenue.

Remember: you don’t need more data. You need the right data.

So whether you’re scaling a content strategy, fixing a broken funnel, or trying to justify ad spend, make this your next step: audit your current analytics stack and align it with what your business is really trying to achieve.

Need help getting there faster? Our team can help you build a no-nonsense analytics strategy that connects insight to action.

Every day you’re not tracking the right metrics, you’re leaving revenue on the table. Let’s fix that. Book your GA4 audit now.