Using Analytics to Actually Improve Your Website (Not Just Stare at Numbers)

Most Dubuque business owners have Google Analytics installed on their website. They log in occasionally, see some charts and numbers, think "that's interesting," and close the tab. The data sits there, completely unused. Here's the thing: analytics are only valuable if you actually use them to make decisions. Let me show you how to turn those numbers into real business improvements.

What You Should Actually Track

Google Analytics offers hundreds of metrics. Most of them don't matter for small businesses. Focus on these:

Traffic Sources

Where are visitors coming from? Organic search, paid ads, social media, direct traffic, referrals? This tells you which marketing channels actually work. If you're spending $500/month on Facebook ads but only getting 20 visits, that's a problem. If 80% of your traffic comes from organic search, you know SEO is working.

Top Pages

Which pages get the most traffic? These are your money pages—double down on them. Make sure they load fast, have clear calls-to-action, and are optimized for conversions. If your blog post about "winterizing pipes in Iowa" gets tons of traffic but your service pages don't, you have a navigation or internal linking problem.

Bounce Rate and Time on Page

Bounce rate is the percentage of people who land on a page and leave without visiting another page. High bounce rates (over 70%) usually mean the page isn't relevant to what people expected, loads too slowly, or doesn't have a clear next step. Time on page tells you if people are actually reading or just bouncing immediately.

Conversion Goals

This is the most important metric and the one most businesses don't set up. A conversion is when someone completes a desired action—submits a contact form, calls you, downloads something, makes a purchase. Set up conversion tracking in Analytics and track your conversion rate religiously.

Page Load Speed

Analytics can show you which pages load slowly. Slow pages kill conversions and hurt SEO. If your homepage takes 6 seconds to load on mobile, you're losing customers before they even see your content.

How to Use Analytics to Make Real Improvements

Identify Your Best Traffic Sources, Then Invest More

Let's say you check Analytics and see that 60% of your leads come from organic search, 25% from referrals, 10% from social media, and 5% from paid ads. This is telling you: double down on SEO (it's working), nurture those referral relationships, consider cutting social media budget, and either fix or kill the paid ads.

Most businesses spread effort evenly across channels. Smart businesses put 80% of effort into the 20% of channels that drive results.

Fix High-Bounce Pages

Find pages with high traffic but 75%+ bounce rates. These are opportunities. Ask why people are leaving:

• Does the page load slowly? (Check PageSpeed Insights)
• Is the content actually helpful or just keyword-stuffed fluff?
• Is there a clear next step or call-to-action?
• Does the page match what people expected from their search?

Fix the problems, monitor if bounce rate improves. We've seen pages go from 80% bounce to 45% bounce just by improving load speed and adding clear CTAs.

Optimize Your Conversion Funnel

Track the path users take from landing on your site to converting. Where do they drop off? If 1,000 people visit your services page but only 100 visit the contact page, something's wrong with the services page. If 100 people visit the contact page but only 10 submit the form, your form might be too complicated or broken.

Fix the biggest bottleneck first, then move to the next one.

Use Heatmaps to See What People Actually Do

Tools like Microsoft Clarity (free) or Hotjar show you where people click, how far they scroll, and what they ignore. You might think your sidebar is important, but heatmaps show nobody looks at it. You might discover people are trying to click on images that aren't links, causing frustration.

We installed Clarity on a Dubuque client's site and discovered people were clicking on a large image thinking it was a button. We made it an actual button linking to the contact page, and conversions increased immediately.

Test Different Calls-to-Action

Use Analytics to track which CTAs get clicked. Does "Request a Quote" perform better than "Contact Us"? Does "Schedule Free Consultation" beat "Get Started"? Test variations, measure results, keep winners.

Setting Up Analytics Properly

Most businesses have Analytics installed but not configured correctly. Here's what you need to set up:

Conversion Goals

Set up goals for every important action: contact form submissions, phone clicks, quote requests, downloads. Without goals, you're just watching traffic numbers with no idea if that traffic is valuable.

E-commerce Tracking (If Applicable)

If you sell products online, enable e-commerce tracking to see exactly which products sell, which don't, and where people abandon carts.

Event Tracking

Track specific interactions like video plays, PDF downloads, outbound link clicks. This tells you what content actually engages people.

Custom Dashboards

Create a simple dashboard that shows only the metrics you care about. Don't waste time digging through menus—have your key numbers (traffic sources, conversions, top pages) right on your dashboard.

Monthly Analytics Review Checklist

Block 30 minutes monthly to review your analytics. Here's what to check:

1. Overall traffic trend: Up, down, or flat? Why?
2. Traffic sources: Any big changes? New referrers? Drop in organic search?
3. Top performing pages: What's working? Can you create similar content?
4. Worst performing pages: High bounce rate? Time to improve or delete them?
5. Conversion rate: Better or worse than last month? What changed?
6. Mobile vs desktop: Is mobile traffic converting well or do you have mobile UX issues?
7. Load speed: Any pages getting slower?

Document your findings and action items. Analytics reviews are useless if you don't do anything with the insights.

Beyond Google Analytics

Analytics is great for quantitative data (what happened) but doesn't tell you why. Combine it with:

Microsoft Clarity (Free)

Heatmaps, session recordings, and insights into how people actually use your site. You can watch recordings of real users navigating your site—incredibly valuable for identifying UX problems.

Google Search Console

Shows which search queries bring people to your site, your average position in search results, and technical issues Google finds. If organic search is important (it should be), check Search Console monthly.

Customer Feedback

Actually ask customers how they found you and what almost stopped them from contacting you. Analytics shows numbers, customers tell you stories. Both matter.

The Biggest Analytics Mistake

The biggest mistake is analysis paralysis—getting so caught up in data that you never make changes. Don't wait for perfect data. If Analytics shows a problem, fix it. Test, measure, adjust. Action beats perfect analysis every time.

The second biggest mistake? Ignoring analytics completely and making website decisions based on personal preferences. "I don't like how that button looks" doesn't matter if analytics shows it converts well.

When to Get Help

If you're staring at Analytics and have no idea what you're looking at, or you know there are problems but don't know how to fix them, get help. A few hours with someone who knows what they're doing can save months of guessing.

We do analytics audits for Dubuque businesses where we dig into your data, identify what's working and what's broken, and give you a prioritized action plan. Sometimes it's quick fixes (add a CTA here, speed up this page), sometimes it's bigger changes (your mobile site is costing you conversions). Either way, you'll know exactly what to do next. Want us to look at your analytics and tell you what we see? Book a free audit and we'll give you honest, actionable recommendations.