The Year-End Numbers Worth Writing Down

The second column

In January, the advice here was to put 2018 on a single page before changing anything: monthly visits, enquiries and calls, the most visited pages, the biggest sources, and a line on each month.

The year is nearly over, and 2019 goes in the column beside it.

For a business that made the page in January, this is an afternoon's work. For one that did not, this is the year to start, because next December will need something to compare against.

Why this week and not in March

The figures are easier to gather now than they will be later.

Search Console only keeps sixteen months of search figures, so January of this year disappears from it in the spring. Some listing figures cover an even shorter window.

Memory fades faster still. The notes explaining why August was quiet or March was busy are easiest to write while the year is fresh.

December is not over, so do January to November now and add December in the first week of the new year.

The same figures, counted the same way

• Monthly visits, measured exactly as last January.
• Monthly enquiries, from forms and email, counted as before.
• Monthly calls, from the same records as before.
• The ten most visited pages, with last year's rank beside each.
• The five biggest sources, grouped the same way.
• A note for each month on anything unusual.

The fourth usually tells you the most. Totals move slowly, but a page climbing from ninth to second shows what customers have started looking for, often before anybody in the business has noticed.

This year's figures come with footnotes

Some of this year's numbers were not counted quite the way last year's were, and the page should say so.

Since March, Safari has limited how long Analytics can remember a visitor to seven days, so people who return less often are counted as new. Visits are still broadly comparable; users, and new against returning, are less so.

Firefox's tracking protection, on by default since September, mostly affects advertising figures rather than your own analytics.

Other footnotes are your own: the month a filter began excluding the office's visits, the month goals were set up, the week the form stopped sending, the switch to a Search Console property covering the whole domain.

Reading the two columns

Set each month against the same month of 2018, never against the month before. Most businesses are seasonal, and the calendar explains more of any month-to-month change than the website does.

Then compare the year totals, which smooth out the odd week. Small numbers wander, and a difference of two or three enquiries in a month is usually noise.

Mark the months where the comparison is unfair: a week closed for snow, a renovation, a long holiday. The notes column is where that goes.

Look at the shape as well as the size. A busy season starting earlier, or a quiet month that stayed busy, can matter more than any total.

What changed, and what did not

Three readings are enough for most businesses.

First, what changed, and whether the notes explain it. Second, what stayed the same, which is often more reassuring than owners expect. Third, what nobody can explain, which is where any investigation should start.

Enquiries and calls come before visits. A year with fewer visits and the same number of enquiries is not a worse year; it may simply mean fewer people arriving who were never going to call.

A worked example

An irrigation company with three technicians made its 2018 page last January. This week the office manager added 2019 beside it.

Visits for the year were close to 2018's. Form enquiries were down in July, and the notes explained why: a plugin update had stopped the form sending for nine days before anyone noticed.

Calls were steady. Spring start-up requests began in March rather than April, and the notes recorded a reminder email sent to existing customers in late February.

The biggest change was in the pages. The backflow testing page had climbed from seventh to second, though nobody had touched it in two years.

That became the decision for next year: rewrite the backflow page with prices, the testing season and a booking form, and test the contact form every Monday.

Figures from outside the website

Some of the year's most useful figures never pass through the website at all.

Search Console reports impressions as well as clicks: how often your pages appeared in results, not only how often somebody visited.

More questions are now answered on the results page itself, so flat clicks beside rising impressions are not necessarily a decline.

The Google My Business listing reports calls, direction requests and website clicks made from the listing. Its reports reach back only a limited way, so copy this year's figures out now.

Put both beside the website's own numbers. Together they show people finding the business, not just people visiting the site.

What it suggests for next year

The page is not a report card. It is a short list of decisions.

One or two are usually enough: improve the page customers have started using, fix whatever broke unnoticed, look into the source that fell away, set up the goal that was missing.

Write them at the bottom of the page, with a month beside each. Next December, the third column will show whether they happened.

The counter-case

The comparison has limits. Where enquiries run to a handful a month, most of the differences between the two columns are chance, and only the year totals are worth reading closely.

A business that moved, rebuilt its site or changed what it sells this year cannot compare like with like. For it, 2019 becomes the new baseline rather than a comparison.

Either way, the column is worth filling in. It is what makes next year's question answerable.

Before the new year

1. Open last January's page with 2018 on it.
2. Add January to November 2019 beside it.
3. Count enquiries and calls the same way.
4. Write this year's footnotes beside the figures.
5. Set each month beside its match from 2018.
6. Choose one or two changes for next year.
7. Add December in the first week of January.

Step four is what protects next year's reading. Without the footnotes, a change in how browsers count visitors will look like a change in the business.

Last January's version of this page, and how it was built, is in writing down last year's numbers first.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.