Turn traffic into meaningful questions.

Choose the outcome and the unit

Start with the action that answers a business question: a completed order, a qualified enquiry, or another clearly defined event. Specify whether the denominator is users, sessions, eligible visitors, or opportunities. A conversion percentage without its denominator is incomplete.

Website analytics is separate from portfolio alpha. Here, better analysis means more useful measurement and interpretation, not a financial excess-return estimate.

Keep the funnel coherent

The sample below begins with 1,000 eligible sessions. Of those, 400 reach a detail page, 120 reach checkout, and 36 complete an order. Each stage is a subset of the preceding stage, counted under the same invented rule.

The landing-to-order rate is 3.6%, while checkout-to-order is 30%. Both describe the same example with different denominators. They should not share an unlabeled “conversion rate” heading.

Inspect groups and measurement changes

An overall rate can shift because the visitor mix changed, even when rates within individual groups did not. Compare relevant sources, devices, or cohorts only after checking that the definitions and time windows are aligned.

Changes in event configuration, consent, filtering, or duplicate counting can also change reports. Validate a measurement change before interpreting it as a change in visitor behavior.

Separate attribution from causation

A report’s credit assignment describes the chosen attribution convention. It does not by itself prove which channel caused an additional outcome. State the convention and the limits of the available evidence.

Read traffic to meaningful conversions for a detailed workflow, including event testing and denominator checks. No analytics account, tracker, or data collection is connected to the example below.