Analytics
See which calls came from where.
Most local businesses judge their marketing by feel. The phone rang more this month, so the ads must be working, or the phone went quiet, so someone is to blame. We set up call and form tracking for local businesses so you can see where your calls, form submissions and other leads actually come from. Calls and forms from the site get a source: which page, which search, which ad.
The phone rings and nobody knows why
A local business usually has a few things running at once: a website, a Google Business Profile, some ads, maybe a directory listing. The phone rings, forms come in, and the credit goes to whichever one the owner happened to be thinking about that week. Ask the web guy and it was the site. Ask the ad guy and it was the ads. Nobody can show you, because nothing was set up to record it.
Nobody chooses this. It is just where a business ends up. Calls go to the same number from everywhere. Forms land in an inbox with no note of which page they came from. Google Analytics was installed once and nobody has opened it since. Decisions about spending get made on a hunch, and a hunch cannot be checked.
Where the Baseline comes in
Before anything is installed, the Baseline writes down what your site can tell you today. Whether an analytics property exists and who owns it. Whether a call from the site can be told apart from a call off a sign. Whether a form submission carries the page it was sent from. Whether an ad click that turns into a phone call gets counted against that ad. Where the answer is no, that goes on the record with a date on it.
Then the tracking goes in and the same questions get asked again. That is the after: calls and forms carrying a source, and the report showing it. It also becomes the Baseline for everything else we do for you: from then on, SEO work, profile work and ad spend can be judged by what they produced, not what they cost.
What call and form tracking for local businesses includes
- A Google Analytics property, set up to report leads rather than page views.
- Call tracking, with numbers on the site that tell a call from an ad apart from a call from a search.
- Form tracking, so each submission records the page it came from and what brought the visitor there.
- Conversion events, so a call or a form counts as a result wherever the traffic is reported.
- A report written for the owner, not the analyst: which sources produced calls and forms, in plain words.
- Everything installed and documented so the after can be laid against the Baseline.
Who this is for
For a business that spends money on marketing and wants to see what that spending produces. It fits anyone paying for ads, for SEO, or for a site and wondering which of them the phone is ringing for.
Questions before you book
Will call tracking change the number on my Google Business Profile?
No. The number on your profile, your signage and your invoices is left alone. Tracking numbers appear on the website, shown to visitors according to where they came from, and each one forwards to your real line.
Does this need a new website?
Usually not. Tracking goes onto the site you have, whoever built it. The Baseline records what that site can support before anything is installed: whether a form can carry its source, whether the pages load the tracking code cleanly. If the site itself turns out to be the obstacle, you hear that first, with the options laid out, rather than getting tracking code dropped onto a page that cannot hold it.
What does it cost?
Pricing is on request, quoted against your Baseline. What you pay depends on what is already in place and what is missing: a site with a working analytics property needs less than one with nothing.
Related services
Start with a Baseline.
Tell us where the money goes, and we will start by writing down what it is producing today.