What is web analytics?

Web analytics is the practice of measuring and making sense of how people use your website. It tells you how many people came, where they came from, which pages they viewed, and whether they went on to an inquiry, a sign-up, or another goal.

Say you run a yoga studio and want more people to book a trial lesson. Are the people who book coming from your flyers, from Instagram, or from search? Where in the booking form do people stop? With web analytics, you can answer questions like these from records rather than guesswork. Once you know what to fix, you can put your limited time where it counts.

How does web analytics count visits?

The most common method today is to add a small piece of code, called a tag, to your pages. It’s written in JavaScript and works like this:

1. A visitor opens a page in their browser
2. The tag runs and sends the page’s address (URL), its title, the page the visitor came from, the type of device and browser, and similar details to the analytics server
3. The analytics tool groups incoming records into visits and attaches a source and any conversions
4. You read the numbers in the tool’s reports

Tags can record more than page views. They can also record actions such as clicking a button or link and submitting a form.

Not every visit gets counted, though. Browsers with ad blockers, or with JavaScript turned off, may never send a record. Tools also differ in how they filter out bots (programs that browse sites automatically). Think of analytics numbers as a guide for comparing what went up or down and what’s most common, not as an exact head count. That way you’re less likely to misread them.

How are page views, visits, and visitors different?

Analytics uses similar-sounding words for different things.

Term	What it counts	Example
Page views	How many times pages were shown	One person who views the pricing, instructor, and booking pages adds 3
Visits (sessions)	One stretch of time from arriving on the site until leaving	The same person coming in the morning and again at night adds 2
Visitors (users)	How many browsers came	Coming morning and night on the same phone still adds 1

A visit ends after a period of inactivity. In Google Analytics 4, the default is 30 minutes, and many other tools also use 30 minutes.

Visitors are told apart by an ID stored in the browser, usually in a cookie. That’s why one person on a phone and a computer counts as two visitors, and why someone who clears their browser data shows up as a new visitor. To learn how cookies work, see “What are cookies?”

Bounce rate and time on site

Bounce rate is the classic example of a number whose definition depends on the tool. The traditional meaning is “the share of visits that viewed only one page and left.” In Google Analytics 4, however, bounce rate is the share of visits that lasted under 10 seconds, viewed only one page, and included no action you’ve marked as important. Before you compare these numbers across tools, or with someone else’s, check how each one is defined.

How can you tell where visitors came from?

A visitor’s source is where they came from. There are two main clues.

The first is the referrer, which the browser provides. When someone clicks a link to move to another page, the browser tells the new page the address of the previous one. By default, though, modern browsers share only the domain part of that address when the link goes to a different site. So you can see that someone came from Google, but web analytics usually can’t tell you what they searched for. For the details, see Referrer-Policy on MDN. To see the search words, use Google Search Console (see “What is SEO?”).

The second clue is a tag you add to your own links, explained in the next section.

Most tools group sources into types like these.

Type	Example
Organic search	A regular link in search results
Paid search	An ad in search results
Social	Instagram, X, Facebook, and similar
Email	A link in a newsletter
Referral	A link on another website
Direct	Bookmarks, typed addresses, links from apps that don’t pass a referrer, and other unknown sources

What are UTM parameters?

UTM parameters are tags you add to the end of a link’s URL to say where the visit came from. Google Analytics and many other analytics tools can read them.

Parameter	Meaning	Example
utm_source	Where the visit came from	flyer, newsletter
utm_medium	What kind of channel it was	qr, email
utm_campaign	Which campaign it belongs to	autumn_trial
utm_content	Which link within the same campaign	top_button

For example, if the QR code on your trial lesson flyer points to https://example.com/trial?utm_source=flyer&utm_medium=qr&utm_campaign=autumn_trial, you can count visits and bookings from the flyer separately. Google Analytics asks you to always include utm_source, utm_medium, and utm_campaign together (Google Analytics Help).

A few tips when you add them:

• Values are case-sensitive, so don’t mix Flyer and flyer
• Decide on a naming pattern and write it down
• Don’t add them to links within your own site (UTM parameters are for telling outside entry points apart)
• Never put personal information, such as an email address, in them

What is a conversion?

A conversion is an action you’ve decided to count as a result on your site. For a class, it might be booking a trial. For a small company, it might be sending the contact form, downloading a brochure, or tapping the phone number. In Google Analytics 4, the actions you count as results are called key events.

You might count a conversion when:

• The thank-you page that appears after submitting (for example, /thanks) is opened
• A form is submitted
• A phone or email link is clicked

The share of visits that led to a conversion is the conversion rate. Looking at the conversion rate by source can reveal entry points that bring few visits but many bookings.

Many people take several days to decide, so there’s also the question of which source gets the credit. Counting by the source of the visit that converted, or by the source that first brought the person to your site, can give quite different pictures.

What is form drop-off?

Form drop-off is when someone starts filling in a form and leaves without sending it. Follow the steps from view to start to submission, and look at which field people stop at, to see what to fix. If many people leave a company inquiry form at the “office phone number” field, for instance, you can try making it optional, adding an explanation, or accepting more formats.

What privacy points should you keep in mind?

Web analytics handles records of what visitors view. To help visitors feel comfortable on your site, keep these points in mind:

• Explain clearly in your privacy policy what information is sent, to which company, and why
• Collect only what you need, and delete it after a set period
• Be especially careful if you record what people type into forms. Never collect passwords, card numbers, and the like
• Don’t put personal information, such as email addresses, in URLs or event names
• In some countries and regions, you need visitors’ consent before measuring. Check this along with how you use cookies

When the people measuring take care, web analytics helps build a site that works better for visitors, too.

Summary

• Web analytics measures where visitors come from, what they view, and whether they reach a goal
• Page views, visits, and visitors count different things, and definitions vary a little by tool
• Sources come from the referrer and from UTM parameters; add UTM parameters to links you hand out so you can see them separately
• Decide what counts as a conversion, and look at where people leave forms, to find what to fix
• Tell visitors what you collect, and handle only what you need