How to Know How Many Customers Your Website Brings You

To find out how many customers your website brings you, count the contacts that come from it (WhatsApp messages, phone calls and form submissions) and note where each one came from. Google Analytics shows you how many times people tapped each button. One question to the person ("how did you find us?") covers what the tool can't see.

First, decide what you are counting

Three different numbers get mixed up all the time. A visit is someone who opened your page. A contact is someone who messaged you, called you or filled in a form. A customer is someone who paid you.

Your website can only measure the first two well. The step from contact to customer happens in the conversation, at your front desk or at your counter, and the site sees none of it. That is why the number worth watching every month is contacts; you then cross it with your own sales.

How to count each type of contact

WhatsApp messages

A WhatsApp button is a link to another website, WhatsApp's. GA4, the current version of Google Analytics, records clicks to other domains on its own through its enhanced measurement, but it stores them as a generic outbound click that doesn't tell you which button on your page it was. To know that, your page has to send a piece of data of its own.

You do that with an event: an action your page reports to Analytics under a name you choose, for example "whatsapp_click". Google documents the exact instruction for sending one, and whoever builds your site adds it to the button in a single line.

On the sites we build at Byte and Brand, every WhatsApp button sends that event with the name of the spot where it sat (the one at the top, the one in the FAQ, the one at the close). The pre-filled message carries the same label in square brackets. That way you see it in Analytics, and you also read it in your own WhatsApp when the person arrives.

Once Analytics has received the event, mark it as a key event so it shows up in your reports as something that matters. In Admin, under Data display, open Events and click the star next to the event; menu names can vary with the language of your account. Google spells out three things: marking an event affects reports from that moment on and doesn't change historic data, a standard property allows up to 30 key events, and standard reports can take up to 24 hours to show it.

Phone calls

If people call you from their phones, calls get counted in two places. On your page, a phone link can send its own event, just like the WhatsApp one. And on your Google listing, the Business Profile performance report counts how many times a customer tapped the call button, as long as you have added your phone number there. These are two different counts: don't add them together without thinking.

Forms

Analytics has an enhanced measurement setting that records when someone starts a form (form_start) and when they submit it (form_submit). The second is the one that matters. Google's own help page mentions one limitation: the extra data attached to those events only shows up in your reports if someone creates custom dimensions for them, so if you have several forms it is worth having an experienced person set it up.

Where each contact came from

Knowing that several people wrote to you helps little if you can't tell whether they came from Google, Instagram or an ad. Analytics answers that in the traffic acquisition report, which groups visits by channel. According to Google's definitions, the main channels are these:

• Organic Search: people arrived from non-ad links in search results.
• Paid Search: people arrived from ads on search engines.
• Organic Social: people arrived from non-ad links on social sites.
• Referral: people arrived from non-ad links on other sites or apps.
• Direct: people arrived from a saved link or by typing your address.

For your own ads and posts, tag every link with UTM parameters: three pieces of data added to the end of the address that Analytics reads. "utm_source" says who sends the visit (google, newsletter), "utm_medium" the type of channel (cpc, email) and "utm_campaign" the promotion. Google says you should always use all three, that values are case sensitive ("Google" and "google" count as different sources) and that missing parameters show up as "(not set)" in your reports.

What this measurement doesn't tell you

Three limits are worth knowing so you don't treat the numbers as absolute truth.

• The click is not the message. On most sites, ours included, the event fires when the button is tapped, before WhatsApp finishes opening. If the person closes the window, the click has already been counted even though no message ever arrives.
• You only count people who accepted cookies. If your site asks permission to measure and the person says no, nothing is recorded. That is the right behavior, and it means your figures are a minimum, not the total.
• A manual call leaves no trace. Someone who sees your number and dials it by hand shows up in neither count.

The fix needs no technology: when someone writes or calls, ask how they found you and write it down in a notebook or a spreadsheet. After one month of answers you can compare them against Analytics.

A monthly review of about 15 minutes

• Open the traffic acquisition report and write down the visits for each channel.
• Write down how many times each key event fired: WhatsApp, phone and form.
• Open your Google listing's performance and note the calls, messages and website clicks.
• Count in your notebook how many contacts ended up becoming customers.
• Compare with the previous month. One month says little; the trend says more.

In short

Count contacts, not visits: WhatsApp, calls and forms. Send them to Analytics as key events, tag your links with UTM and review the source channel once a month. Fill in what the tool can't see with one question to each person and a notebook. That tells you how hard your site is working, without depending on anyone else to say so.