The five numbers to track every month to know your website is working

Most website reports are full of numbers that don’t answer the only question that matters: is the site bringing in business? Sessions, bounce rate and page views are easy to measure and hard to act on. These five numbers tell you whether your website is working, and what to do next.

1. Leads by source

What it is: the number of calls, form submissions and quote requests your website produced, broken down by where each visitor came from: Google search, Google Maps, ads, AI assistants, referrals, email.

Why it matters: it’s the closest thing to a direct answer to “is the website working?”, and it shows which channels deserve more attention.

How to set it up: call tracking with dynamic number insertion for phone calls, and hidden source fields on every form. In Google Analytics 4, mark form submissions and calls as key events.

If you only track one thing, track leads by source. Everything else on this list explains why that number went up or down.

2. Cost per lead, by channel

What it is: what you spent on each channel divided by the leads it produced.

Why it matters: a channel can look busy and still cost too much per lead, while a quiet one quietly delivers your best customers at a fraction of the price.

How to set it up: combine your spend (ads, SEO, directories) with the leads-by-source numbers above. A simple spreadsheet works.

3. Conversion rate of your key pages

What it is: the share of visitors to a page who call or submit a form.

Why it matters: if a service page gets plenty of visitors but few leads, the problem is the page: unclear message, weak proof, or a buried call to action. That’s often the cheapest thing to fix.

How to set it up: in GA4, compare key events with visits for your homepage, main service pages and landing pages.

4. Rankings and clicks for the searches that bring in work

What it is: where you appear in Google for the handful of searches that actually turn into customers (“commercial roofing [city]”, “aerospace parts distributor”), and how many clicks they bring.

Why it matters: it’s the leading indicator. Rankings usually move before leads do.

How to set it up: Google Search Console shows the queries you appear for, your average position and clicks, free. Focus on a short list of money searches rather than hundreds of keywords.

5. What AI assistants say about you

What it is: whether ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google’s AI name your business when asked the questions your buyers ask, and whether what they say is accurate.

Why it matters: more buyers now ask an assistant before they search. There’s no dashboard for this yet, so most businesses don’t look.

How to set it up: keep a list of five to ten questions. Ask each assistant every month and note who gets named and which sources are cited.

Putting it in one report

A useful monthly report fits on one page:

Monthly report

Sample

Calls and forms by source

Google

AI search

Referral

Direct

What we’re improving next →

Does your monthly report answer these?

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• Leads this month, by source, compared with last month
• Cost per lead for each paid channel
• The three pages that need attention, and why
• Movement on your money searches
• What AI assistants said, and anything that’s wrong
• What’s changing next month

If your current report doesn’t answer those questions in plain English, it’s measuring activity, not results.

Frequently asked questions

What about traffic?

Traffic is useful context, especially when leads change: did fewer people visit, or did fewer visitors get in touch? On its own, it doesn’t tell you whether the site is working.

How long before these numbers mean something?

Leads by source is useful from the first month. Rankings and AI mentions move more slowly; look at the trend over three to six months.

Does Leadsure report on this?

Yes. Every Leadsure website includes call and form tracking and a plain-English report every month covering what the site produced, where it came from and what we’re improving next.