You Set Up Google Analytics — Now What? 5 Numbers That Actually Tell You Something

You did it. You set up Google Analytics on your website. Someone told you it was important, you clicked through the setup, and now you have a dashboard full of charts, percentages, and words like "sessions," "dimensions," and "acquisition flow."

And you have absolutely no idea what you're looking at.

You're not alone. Most business owners install it and then never open it again — which is a shame, because buried inside all that noise are a handful of numbers that can genuinely change how you run your business. You just need to know which ones to look at.

Here are the five that matter.

1. How Many People Are Actually Visiting Your Site

In Google Analytics, this is called Users (or Active Users). Think of it like foot traffic in a physical shop. If you opened a boutique and only three people walked in all week, you'd want to know that. Same idea here.

Look at this number week over week, not just in isolation. If you ran a promotion last Tuesday and your visitors jumped from 80 to 400, that's the promotion working. If the number is flat month after month, your site isn't growing — and that's worth paying attention to.

2. Where Those Visitors Are Coming From

This is called Traffic Source or Acquisition. It tells you how people found you — through Google search, Instagram, a link someone shared, or by typing your address directly.

Imagine you own a café and you're spending €300 a month on flyers and €300 on Instagram ads. Traffic source data is like finally being able to ask every customer, "How did you hear about us?" and actually getting an answer.

If 80% of your visitors come from Instagram but you're barely posting there, that's a signal to double down. If you're spending money on Google Ads but those visitors make up 2% of your traffic, that's a different kind of signal.

3. Bounce Rate — Are People Leaving Immediately?

Bounce rate is the percentage of people who land on your site and leave without doing anything — no clicking, no scrolling, nothing. They bounced, like a ball off a wall.

A high bounce rate (say, above 70–75%) usually means one of a few things: the page loaded too slowly, it looked bad on mobile, or the page didn't match what people expected to find. If someone Googles "best Italian restaurant in Oslo" and lands on your homepage that's mostly about your catering service, they'll leave immediately.

A good benchmark to aim for is somewhere between 40–60%, depending on your type of business.

4. Your Most Visited Pages

This one is exactly what it sounds like — which pages on your site are people actually reading? In Analytics, you'll find this under Pages and Screens.

Here's why it matters: a landscaping company owner once noticed that his "Spring Cleanup Package" page was getting three times more visits than any other page on his site — but it had no contact form, no phone number, and no clear next step. Pure dead end. He added a simple enquiry form, and his leads that month doubled.

Your most visited pages are your busiest rooms. Make sure they're set up properly.

5. Conversion Events — Is Your Site Actually Doing Its Job?

A conversion event is any action that means something to your business: someone submitting a contact form, clicking your phone number, signing up for your newsletter, or buying something.

This is the metric most business owners skip setting up — and it's the most important one. Without it, you're just counting visitors with no idea if any of them turned into customers.

Think of it this way: knowing 500 people walked into your shop is useful. Knowing 500 people walked in and 12 bought something is actually actionable. That's what conversion tracking gives you.

Setting these up does require a bit of configuration (it's not as automatic as the other metrics), but once they're in place, you'll finally be able to connect your website activity to real business outcomes.

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The Honest Truth About Analytics

These five metrics won't run themselves. You need to check them regularly — even just once a month — and actually ask yourself what they're telling you. The data doesn't make decisions. You do.

The good news is you don't need to become a data analyst. You just need to notice patterns: What went up? What went down? Did something I did have an effect?

And if you open the dashboard and still feel like you're reading a foreign language, that's normal too. Google Analytics is a powerful tool, but it wasn't exactly designed with busy business owners in mind.

If you'd like a second opinion on your project, I'm easy to reach — get in touch here.