Understanding Your Website Analytics: A Guide for Cardiff Business Owners

Most Cardiff business owners have Google Analytics installed on their website. Most of them log in about once a month, stare at a wall of numbers they don't fully understand, and close the tab feeling vaguely guilty.

That's a waste. Your website analytics are telling you something genuinely useful — you just need to know what to look for.

This guide cuts through the complexity. By the end, you'll know which numbers actually matter for a Cardiff or Wales-based business, how to read them, and what actions to take based on what you find.

We're focusing on Google Analytics 4 (GA4), which is now the standard — the old Universal Analytics was retired in 2023.

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Why Analytics Matter for Cardiff Businesses

Before diving into the how, let's be clear on the why.

Your website is either generating leads and customers, or it isn't. Analytics tell you which. More specifically, they tell you:

• Where your visitors are coming from
• Which pages they visit and for how long
• Where they leave your site
• Whether they're completing the actions you want them to take

For a Cardiff estate agent, that action might be a valuation request form. For a Pontcanna restaurant, it might be a table reservation. For a Cardiff solicitor, it might be someone calling the phone number on the contact page.

Without analytics, you're making decisions about your website in the dark. With them, you can see what's working and what needs fixing.

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Getting Started with GA4

If you don't have Google Analytics on your website yet, it's free and relatively straightforward to install. You'll need a Google account, and then you create a GA4 property at analytics.google.com.

If your site runs on WordPress, there are plugins (like Google Site Kit) that handle the installation without touching code. For other platforms — Squarespace, Wix, Shopify — there are usually built-in integrations.

Important: Once you install GA4, it starts collecting data from that point forward. It can't retroactively show you historical data. So the sooner you install it, the better.

One thing Cardiff businesses often miss: you need to accept GA4's terms and configure your data retention settings. By default, data is only kept for 2 months. Change this to 14 months in Admin → Data Settings → Data Retention. Do this first.

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The GA4 Dashboard: What You're Actually Looking At

When you log into GA4, the default home screen shows a summary. Here's what each section means in plain English:

Users: How many different people visited your site in the selected time period. (GA4 actually calls these "active users" — someone who had at least one engaged session.)

New vs Returning Users: New visitors vs people who've been before. For most Cardiff service businesses, a healthy split is roughly 60–70% new, 30–40% returning. High returning traffic is great — it means people keep coming back. High new traffic is also great — you're reaching new audiences.

Sessions: A session is a visit. One user can have multiple sessions. If someone visits your Cardiff plumbing website Monday morning and comes back Tuesday afternoon, that's two sessions from one user.

Engagement Rate: This replaced the old "bounce rate" metric. It shows the percentage of sessions where someone spent more than 10 seconds on your site, viewed more than one page, or completed a conversion. Higher is better. Below 40% for a service business warrants investigation.

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The Metrics That Actually Matter

Here's the thing: GA4 shows you hundreds of different data points. Most of them don't matter for a Cardiff SME. Focus on these:

1. Traffic Sources

Go to Reports → Acquisition → Traffic Acquisition. This shows you where your visitors come from:

• Organic Search: People who found you via Google. This is what SEO affects.
• Direct: People who typed your URL directly or came via bookmarks.
• Referral: Links from other websites.
• Paid Search: If you're running Google Ads.
• Organic Social: From social media posts (not ads).

For most Cardiff local businesses, organic search is the most valuable channel. If it's low — say, under 30% of your traffic — that's a signal your SEO needs work.

2. Landing Pages

Go to Reports → Engagement → Landing Pages. This shows which pages people arrive on first.

Most Cardiff businesses assume their homepage gets all the traffic. Often it doesn't. Your "Cardiff plumber emergency callout" service page, or a blog post about local heating tips, might be driving significant traffic. Knowing this helps you understand what's working and what to invest in.

3. Geographic Data

Go to Reports → User → Demographic Details and filter by City.

For a Cardiff-based business, you want to see Cardiff featuring prominently, ideally alongside nearby areas like Newport, Bridgend, or the Valleys if those are markets you serve.

If you're seeing significant traffic from outside Wales — say, London or Manchester — that's worth investigating. It might be irrelevant traffic, or it might be an opportunity you hadn't considered.

4. Top Performing Pages

Go to Reports → Engagement → Pages and Screens. Sort by Views.

This tells you what people actually want from your site. A Cardiff accountancy firm might discover their "self-employed tax return" page gets triple the traffic of their homepage. That's a signal: more content on that topic, a stronger call-to-action on that page, possibly a dedicated landing page for a paid campaign.

5. Average Engagement Time

Under the same Pages report, you can see average engagement time per page. For blog posts and long-form content, you want to see 2–4+ minutes. For homepage and service pages, 45 seconds to 2 minutes is reasonable.

Very low engagement time (under 20 seconds) on important pages means people are arriving and immediately leaving. That's usually a sign of a mismatch between what they expected and what they found.

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Setting Up Conversion Tracking — The Most Important Step

Traffic data is interesting. Conversion data is what you actually need.

A conversion is when someone takes the action you want them to take. For most Cardiff businesses, that's one of:

• Submitting a contact form
• Clicking your phone number
• Making a purchase (if you sell online)
• Booking an appointment
• Signing up to a mailing list

GA4 calls these Key Events (they used to be called Goals in old Universal Analytics).

Setting Up Basic Conversion Tracking

The simplest conversions to track in GA4 are form submissions and button clicks. Here's the basic process:

1. Go to Admin → Events
2. Create a new event that fires when your contact form thank-you page is visited (e.g., yoursite.co.uk/thank-you)
3. Mark that event as a "Key Event" by toggling it in Admin → Key Events

If your website developer set up GA4 for you and you're not seeing any conversions tracked, ask them to configure this. It's a straightforward task that many developers skip unless specifically asked.

Why this matters: Without conversion tracking, you don't know which traffic sources are actually generating enquiries. You might be spending money on Google Ads that's driving clicks but zero enquiries. Or you might be ignoring organic search that's driving all your leads. You literally cannot tell without tracking.

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Reading Your Data: A Monthly Routine for Cardiff Business Owners

You don't need to check analytics every day. But a monthly review — 20–30 minutes — will give you real insight. Here's a simple routine:

Week 1 of each month:

1. Log into GA4, set the date range to last month
2. Check total users vs same month last year (or previous month)
3. Check your top traffic source — is organic search growing?
4. Check your Key Events (conversions) — how many did you get?
5. Find your best performing landing page — what can you do more of?
6. Find your worst performing page (high views, low engagement) — does it need rewriting?

Write down three observations and one action you'll take. That's it.

Consistency matters more than depth here. Businesses that check regularly and act on small insights consistently outperform those who do a quarterly deep dive and then nothing.

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Common Analytics Problems Cardiff Businesses Face

"I have loads of traffic but no enquiries."

This is the most common issue. Usually it means one of three things:

• Your traffic isn't genuinely local (check your geographic data)
• Your landing pages aren't converting — the content or calls-to-action need improving
• Your conversion tracking isn't set up, so you're not seeing the enquiries that are happening

"My traffic dropped suddenly."

Check whether it coincides with a Google algorithm update (Moz and Search Engine Journal track these). Also check whether any major pages were accidentally deleted or changed. A drop in organic traffic often points to an SEO issue.

"I don't know what to do with all this data."

Pick one metric per month and focus on it. If this month you're focusing on geographic traffic, just look at that. Don't try to understand everything at once.

"The numbers don't match what I'm seeing in my CRM or booking system."

GA4 uses sampling and cookies, both of which are imperfect. It's normal for GA4 numbers to be 10–20% off from your actual transaction data. Use GA4 for trends and patterns, not as a source of precise transaction data.

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Connecting Google Analytics to Google Search Console

This is a free, five-minute setup that Cardiff businesses consistently overlook.

Google Search Console shows you which search queries people are using to find your site — before they even click. When you connect it to GA4, you can see which keywords bring visitors and which of those visitors convert.

To connect: GA4 Admin → Property Settings → Search Console Links → Add Link

You'll need to have Search Console already set up for your site (also free, also worth doing if you haven't).

Once connected, go to Reports → Acquisition → Search Console → Queries. You'll see your top search queries, clicks, and impressions. This is gold for SEO — you'll often find you're ranking on page 2 for valuable Cardiff search terms, which means a focused content effort could push you to page 1.

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A Note on GDPR and Cookie Consent for Welsh Businesses

Since UK GDPR applies post-Brexit, you need to get proper cookie consent from visitors before GA4 can track them. This means:

• A clear cookie consent banner on your site
• Users need to actively accept analytics cookies (not just dismiss a banner)
• You should only load GA4 after consent is given

Many Cardiff business websites are not GDPR-compliant in this respect. If your site uses GA4 but doesn't have a proper consent mechanism, you're technically in breach. A good cookie consent plugin (Cookiebot, CookieYes, etc.) handles this automatically.

This does mean your GA4 data may undercount traffic from users who declined cookies. It's a known trade-off and generally accepted by the industry.

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Beyond GA4: Other Analytics Tools Worth Knowing

Google Search Console — Already mentioned. Free. Essential for any Cardiff business doing SEO.

Hotjar or Microsoft Clarity — Free tools that show heatmaps (where people click and scroll on your pages). Excellent for understanding why a page isn't converting.

Google Looker Studio — Free data visualisation tool. Connect it to GA4 to create custom dashboards that show just the metrics you care about. Useful if you have multiple people needing to check analytics regularly.

Plausible or Fathom — Privacy-first analytics alternatives to GA4. Some Cardiff businesses prefer these because they don't require cookie consent banners and are simpler to use. Less data, but cleaner.

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The Takeaway for Cardiff Business Owners

Website analytics are not complicated — they're just unfamiliar. The learning curve is genuinely shallow once you decide what you actually want to know.

Start with one question: "Is my website generating enquiries?"

If you don't know the answer, set up conversion tracking this week. That single step will tell you more than any other analytics change you could make.

From there, add one metric per month. Traffic sources. Geographic data. Top pages. Before long, you'll have a clear picture of what your website is actually doing for your business — and you'll be able to make smarter decisions about where to invest your time and money.

That's what analytics are for. Not to impress people with dashboards. To help Cardiff businesses grow.

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Caversham Digital offers website analytics audits and Google Analytics 4 setup for Cardiff and Wales businesses. Contact us to find out what your website data is really telling you.