The short answer: For most Kamloops service businesses, you need to track three things: how many calls come from your website, how many form submissions you get, and what channel sent each lead (Google search, Google Maps, Facebook, etc.). Google Analytics 4 tracks all three — but only if it's set up correctly, which most local business sites haven't done.
“What's working” is the most important marketing question a business owner can ask. Without tracking, you're guessing which spend to increase and which to cut. Here's how to set up the basics.
The metrics that actually matter for a local service business
Pageviews and sessions aren't useful numbers for a Kamloops plumber or contractor. The numbers that matter:
- Phone calls from the website — how many visitors clicked your phone number
- Form submissions — how many visitors filled in a contact or quote form
- Booking clicks — how many clicked a booking link
- Which channel sent them — Google Search, Google Maps, Facebook, direct visit, referral
Everything else (bounce rate, average session duration, pages per session) is context, not signal. Don't let a dashboards full of interesting but irrelevant numbers distract from these four.
How to track phone clicks
On mobile, your phone number should be a tel: link — when someone taps it, their phone dials. Google Analytics 4 can track these clicks as events.
If you have Google Analytics installed, ask your web developer to add an event on the phone link click. The event name: phone_click. Mark it as a conversion.
If you don't have a developer, a simpler method: use a call tracking number (like CallRail) that forwards to your real number and records every call. It costs roughly $40–$60/month but gives you exact call counts without needing technical setup.
How to track form submissions
For basic contact forms, configure GA4 to fire a conversion event when the form thank-you page loads (or when the success state appears). If your website is on WordPress with a standard plugin, this often only requires checking a settings box. On custom sites, your developer adds a few lines of code.
The minimum setup: know how many form submissions you get per week. Even counting them manually in your email inbox is better than not counting at all.
How to track which channel sent each lead
For organic Google search: GA4 tracks this automatically when installed.
For Google Maps (GBP): Your GBP dashboard already shows how many people called from your listing and how many visited your website from it. Check this monthly — it's often the most important single traffic source for local businesses and most owners never look at it.
For social media, email, and other channels: UTM parameters. These are short tags added to your links that tell Analytics where a visitor came from.
Example: instead of posting https://jagatjeet.com/book on Facebook, you post https://jagatjeet.com/book?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=summer-offer. Analytics then knows that enquiry came from your Facebook post.
The UTM builder generates these links automatically — preset buttons for GBP, Facebook, Instagram, email newsletters, and QR codes. One click to build a tracked link.
The 15-minute monthly check
Once tracking is set up:
- Open Google Analytics → Reports → Conversions. Note total phone clicks and form submissions for the month.
- Open your GBP dashboard → Performance. Note how many calls and website visits came from your listing.
- Check UTM sources in Analytics if you're running campaigns.
That's it. 15 minutes a month tells you whether your website investment is producing measurable results.
When to go further
The basics above cover 80% of what a Kamloops service business needs to know. If you're running Google Ads, you'll need conversion tracking set up at the ad level too. If you're running multiple campaigns across different channels, a proper attribution model becomes important.
For now: get phone clicks and form submissions tracked as conversions in GA4, check your GBP performance monthly, and use UTM parameters for any links you share on social or email. That foundation catches the insights that change decisions.
The free website review covers your Analytics setup alongside your local SEO and conversion rate — including whether your current tracking is giving you real data or misleading you.