Google Analytics, Google Search Console, Web Success Insights, Microsoft Clarity. Mostly free and all important to get you more business from your website visitors.
Most businesses use one or two analytics tools. Very few use them properly. This blog breaks down the four key tools that businesses should have connected to their website.
Three are free, one is free to try.
Each tool offers something different. One tells you what brought people to your website. Another shows what they did when they landed. Others help you fix issues that block visibility and enquiries.
You will learn:
If you are serious about improving your website’s results, investing time in these tools will lead to actions that positively impact your revenues.
12 minutes.
20% of an hour.
I guarantee you’ll find information in this video that you didn’t know about the various website analytics tools, and that will benefit you.
Google Analytics is where most people start because it’s free and well-known. Many businesses have it installed. Few use it properly, probably because it’s not particularly intuitive.
Many people use it to understand where people came from. Organic search, paid ads, direct visits, and others are all tracked. You can also see how many visitors were new and how many returned.
More importantly, it tells you (to a limited extent) what cumulative people did. For instance:
This helps you see whether a specific landing page is doing its job or losing interest quickly. You can also track engagement across different traffic sources and time periods.
However, Google Analyics is more suited to getting an overall picture and does not identify individual website visitors or show detailed user-level behaviour on the page. For a deeper explanation of what Google Analytics can and cannot reveal about your website visitors, see this guide on Google Analytics website visitor identification.
Analytics can be overwhelming at first. But even basic data like time on page and source breakdown gives you useful signals. It also plays an important role as the link between other systems – particularly when you want to build remarketing audiences.
So: you should definitely have Google Analytics installed.
Most people ignore Google Search Console, which is a mistake. It is one of the most useful free tools available.
It shows:
You might discover, for example, that a key page appears regularly in search results but sits in position five or six. That means you are on the first page of Google but not high enough to attract many clicks. You can also find pages that get seen often but clicked very little – a sign that titles or descriptions need work.
Your starting point with Google Search Console is to click on one of your page urls and then look at the keyword phrases that people typed into Google – and your average position in the search results. That then takes you on a journey of working out how to raise the Google positioning of that page by focusing more on what people have been typing.
You can also use Google Search Console to check which pages are indexed and identify issues with your sitemap. But the main power lies in identifying which keywords bring exposure and how to turn that exposure into action.
This is the tool that takes you from guessing to knowing.
It allows you to:
You can view individual visitors and trace their journey. For example, someone might land on a service page, explore two other pages, then submit a form. You will see the exact time and path they took.
If people reached a thank-you page (they filled in a contact form), the tool links that back to the marketing source – giving you full clarity on what led to the enquiry. You can also filter for visitors who dropped out immediately. If this happens regularly (e.g. from Google Ads), there is a problem with your targeting or your landing page.
For B2B, you can identify which organisations visited your site. For B2C, you can even trace the home addresses of visitors. It also shows how people moved through your content, and where they stopped. That kind of detail is rarely available – but makes all the difference when trying to improve website performance.
While it’s the only product that’s not free (apart from a 30 day free trial), it proves its value in multiple ways that generate you more business from your website visitors and marketing.
Microsoft Clarity is free and gives you the most visual understanding of how people use your website.
It includes:
For example, if only a quarter of your visitors scroll far enough to see your pricing table, that is a problem. You will not fix that by guessing. Clarity shows you exactly how many people reach each part of the page – and where the drop-offs happen.
You can also click through to real recordings. See how someone on desktop or mobile moved through the page. Where they paused. What they clicked. Whether they scrolled quickly or skimmed.
Clarity is most useful when you have identified a pattern and want to go a lot deeper. For example, using Web Success Insights to identify all the website visitors who got to a specific page but didn’t get to another key page, and then cross-referencing the days and times of those website visits to the individual visitor recordings often available within Microsoft Clarity.
Each of these tools shows a different piece of the puzzle. Used together, they give you full control over your website performance.
Each tool is strong on its own. But when used together, they let you track the full journey:
From the first Google search…
To the moment they landed…
To what they did next…
To why they took action – or why they didn’t.
That is the level of visibility that turns underperforming websites into assets that generate real results.
I’ve been working with all these tools for many years, including using them to analyse opportunities within thousands of websites.
If you’re not sure what to do next with analytics then feel free to pick my brains (no cost or sales pitch) and I’ll be happy to give you enough beneficial information for you to capitalise on the many new business opportunities you may be currently missing out on.