At the Feb. 26 KC IABC Business Communicators Summit, I led a short breakout session called Website Metrics for Absolute Beginners. It's a topic I feel strongly about, because I run into a lot of smart communicators, marketers, and content folks who know website data matters, but don’t always know where to start (or what to ask for).

The goal wasn’t to turn anyone into an analytics specialist overnight. It was to give you a communicator’s-eye view of what website measurement tools can do, how to explore them without fear, and how know enough to talk to a specialist about what you want and need.

The age of analytics irony

Most of us have experienced creepy end of the analytics spectrum: the uneasy sensation that your phone is listening to you and that ads are following you around. When a company is trying to sell a product, the bottom-line metrics are clear and the techniques to get you to buy feel like they stop just short of harassment.

The types of communications our clients are often responsible for, however, tend to fall on the other end of the spectrum. The metrics around thought leadership, press releases, and other information created with the goal of "increasing brand awareness" can be hard to define and even harder to quantify. But that doesn't mean we give up on metrics entirely.

The good news: you don’t have to live in either extreme. Website analytics can help you understand what’s working, what’s not, and where to focus without crossing into weird.

Start with what you want to answer

If you’re a communicator or content producer, analytics can help you answer practical questions like:

  • How many people visit our site on mobile vs. desktop?
  • Is anyone watching our video all the way through?
  • Do readers make it to the bottom of our blog posts?
  • Which pages are most visited?

It can also help you ask smarter follow-up questions, like why a page spiked in traffic, why social visitors bounce quickly, or why a landing page gets visits but not conversions.

The four tools we covered (and what they’re for)

We anchored the session around four free, Google-supported tools that work together: Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, Google Search Console, and Looker Studio.

1) Google Analytics (GA4): behavior on your site
Google Analytics helps you understand how users got to your site and what they did once they arrived—pages visited, time on page, devices, geography, and more. It’s valuable because it’s an always-on goldmine, patiently collecting data all day, every day. It’s frustrating because the interface and terminology aren’t intuitive.

2) Google Tag Manager (GTM): track the interactions that matter to you
Tag Manager is how you track specific actions that Google Analytics doesn’t automatically track. Think button clicks, downloads, quiz completions, or ad-platform tags like the LinkedIn Insight Tag.

It allows you to define and collect specific data about how people interact on your website – data that GA doesn't catch by default. It also interacts with ad platforms to give you a more complete picture of how your paid ads are performing.

3) Google Search Console (GSC): search visibility & performance
Search Console tells you what search terms brought your site into results, how often your pages appear (impressions), how often people click (clicks), and your average ranking position.

It’s powerful because it’s real-world data about the search terms that are leading people toward your site and whether they're actually clicking through to it.

4) Looker Studio: turn raw data into shareable information
Looker Studio helps you turn data from GA/GSC (and other sources) into dashboards that update continuously—like a slide deck with a live data feed.

This is especially helpful when you need different views for different audiences (your team vs. leadership).

Tool vs. scorecard: a mindset shift that matters

One of the biggest takeaways is also the simplest: analytics can be used to improve your work, or it can become a performance report that creates anxiety and bad decisions. The data you use to choose your next thought-leadership topic isn’t the same data leadership needs in a monthly scorecard. So, gather data ruthlessly, share data mindfully.

If you take nothing else away…

Measurement tools exist. You’re entitled to the information they can provide. You don’t have to be an expert, but you do need basic awareness, a willingness to explore, and permission to ask questions until you get answers you understand.

Want to talk about your analytics setup?

If you attended the KC IABC Business Communicators Summit and want to talk more about it, my contact info is on the last slide.

If you want formal support (GA4/GTM setup, Search Console, Looker dashboards, reporting rhythms, or “help us stop guessing”), Level Five Solutions can help you build an analytics approach that’s useful and realistic.