Measure Only What Matters on the Web for Your Business
"Which web KPIs should we actually track?" This is one of the most common questions I get from marketing managers and CEOs over coffee. And it’s an important one, because it’s easy to drown in reports and statistics that don’t mean anything for the business.
What is a KPI and why should you care?
KPI stands for "Key Performance Indicator," meaning a measure of something important for your business. Many confuse it with "something measurable." But almost everything can be measured, and almost none of it tells you if you’re actually selling more or getting more leads.
I usually say you should measure as little as possible, but enough to make smart decisions. Clicks, page views, and scrolls are often completely irrelevant. They don’t tell you if anyone became a customer or made contact.
"The most important thing isn’t having the most numbers. It’s understanding which ones actually impact results."
Three KPIs that really matter
For most websites of B2B companies with 5–100 employees, there are three things you should keep an eye on:
- Number of inquiries or booked meetings via the web (email, forms, booking systems)
- Number of calls from the web (can be tracked with tracking numbers)
- Number of new customers who started their journey via the web
Everything else is noise. If you spend 40,000 SEK on a new site and 10,000 SEK/month on advertising, you want to know what you get back. Say you get 20 inquiries per month. If 1 out of 5 becomes a customer and an average deal is worth 50,000 SEK, then the web generates 200,000 SEK in revenue per month.
ROI? You spend 10,000 SEK and get 200,000 SEK in business. That’s 20 times your money. Then you know your marketing budget is used right. If it doesn’t look like that, you either need to improve the web’s ability to generate leads or find better ways to drive traffic.
"The important thing isn’t to squeeze the price. It’s to buy the right thing, with open cards."
How to avoid the reporting swamp
My recommendation is to stop spending time on reports listing clicks, page views, and flows between pages. Instead, report on the numbers that say something about business development. For most, a simple table each month is enough:
- Number of incoming leads
- Number of deals closed from the web
- Revenue linked to the web
You can analyze and make decisions in under ten minutes. The rest of the time you can spend improving the customer experience or developing new offers. That’s where growth lives.
I’ve seen too many companies spend both time and money on the wrong measurements. Daring to focus on the right KPIs sometimes takes courage, but it also brings peace of mind. When you see in black and white what the web delivers, you don’t have to guess. It’s liberating. And that’s my best advice, from one marketing manager to another.