Is your website working? The only 5 numbers small businesses need to track

Most website reporting is noise: bounce rates quoted without context, "impressions" celebrated like revenue, dashboards nobody reads. A small business needs to know one thing — is the website producing work? — and that question breaks down into just five numbers. Track these monthly and you'll know more than most marketing reports would ever tell you.

1. Enquiries — the number that is the point

Form submissions, calls, emails, bookings, quote requests. This is the website's output; everything else is diagnostics. Count them in one place monthly, and crucially, ask every new enquiry how they found you — one question that beats a thousand pounds of attribution software. If enquiries are healthy and growing, your website is working, whatever any other metric says. If they're not, our guide to why websites fail to generate leads is the place to start.

2. Visitors — but only as context

Traffic matters only in relation to enquiries. Two hundred visitors and ten enquiries is a superb website; ten thousand visitors and ten enquiries is a leaky one. Watch the trend rather than the absolute number, and note where visitors come from — Google search, your Business Profile, social, direct — because that tells you which of your efforts are paying.

3. Conversion rate — the health check

Enquiries divided by visitors. For local service businesses, somewhere around 2–5% of visitors becoming enquiries is a reasonable benchmark; well-targeted sites do better. This single ratio tells you which problem you have: low traffic with good conversion means work on visibility; good traffic with poor conversion means work on the site itself — message, proof, speed, calls to action.

4. Search visibility — are you winning your searches?

Pick the five searches that matter most to you ("your trade + your town", your key services) and check where you appear — both in the map pack and the normal results. Google Search Console (free) shows exactly which searches bring people to you, which pages Google shows, and whether that's improving. Fifteen minutes a month in Search Console is worth more than any paid rank tracker for a small business.

5. Speed — the silent conversion killer

Slow sites bleed visitors before a word gets read, and Google notices too. Test your mobile score quarterly — our free speed checker runs Google's own measurement — and treat a falling score as maintenance due, not trivia. What "good" looks like and how to fix it: our speed guide.

The monthly fifteen-minute ritual

• Count the month's enquiries and their sources — one line in a spreadsheet
• Glance at visitors and conversion rate: which direction, and why?
• Check your five key searches or Search Console's queries report
• Note one action for next month — a page to improve, a review push, a speed fix

That's the whole discipline. No dashboard subscriptions, no jargon — five numbers, one question honestly answered: is it producing work, and is that improving?