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Deep dives into design thinking, creative process, and the intersection of business and aesthetics.
Analytics is there to make decisions easier, and a prettier dashboard rarely does that.
The monthly report says traffic is up again, and the phone isn't ringing any more often than it was. Sessions, pageviews and bounce rate are vanity metrics for most service businesses. Agencies like them because they usually move the right way and they impress people who don't work in digital, but they rarely tell you whether anyone got in touch.
A site can draw plenty of visitors and still be worth little if they're bouncing off the pricing page or looking for a job. That traffic also muddies your data and can make a flat quarter look good. We'd rather measure intent.
Vanity metrics feel like progress
A rising line feels like work paying off, and it can be filed under brand awareness. For a service business, awareness doesn't cover payroll. We see teams publishing blog posts on a schedule to push traffic up while revenue stays flat.
Decide what a good day looks like first
Before we install a tracking script, we ask what a good day looks like. For most B2B service firms it's a completed enquiry form from someone who fits, or a booked consultation. On mobile, a tap on the phone number counts too.
Decide what "fits" means for you: work you want, in an area you cover, at a size worth taking on, from someone who can say yes. A student filling in the form for a college project is a submission, not a lead. Then put those outcomes at the top of your next report and make every other number earn its place.
Google Analytics needs setting up before it shows any of this
Out of the box, Google Analytics is much better at counting visits than outcomes. So we set up events for the actions that suggest someone is serious: downloading the prospectus, reaching the pricing table, starting the enquiry form, sending it.
Laid out as a funnel, those events show where people give up. If plenty of people read the Services page and hardly any click through to Contact, more traffic won't help; the problem is on the Services page.
For local businesses the phone is often where the enquiry happens, and form tracking can't see it. Dynamic number insertion (CallRail is one example) gives each visitor a number tied to their source, so calls can be traced to the search or ad behind them. Without it, if most of your work comes by phone, your best channel will look like your worst.
Reports built around what a lead costs
Managing directors don't lose sleep over bounce rate. They want to know what a lead costs and what the website contributes to revenue. Our reports leave most metrics out and follow two trends: whether qualified leads are up on last month, and whether each one cost less to win. A board will discuss that. A chart of sessions by device gets nodded through.
A weekly loop of small, unglamorous changes
Data that never changes what you do is just storage. We work in a weekly loop of hypothesis, test, release and measurement. Say the contact form looks too long: we take out two fields and check whether more people finish it.
No single change is dramatic, but they add up. A site adjusted weekly tends to pull ahead of one that's rebuilt every few years and left alone in between. The trade-off is patience. On a site with modest enquiry numbers a week often isn't long enough to see a difference, and some tests will make things worse.
Local search needs its own view
For local businesses, like our clients in Limerick and Shannon, measurement gets more specific. Take a search like web design Limerick: does it bring people to the homepage, or to a page written for that search? We also check whether nearby enquiries convert better than ones from further afield.
With local data separated out, the next move is usually plain enough: fewer town names scattered through headings, and more of whatever already brings in local work.
Related Brainstorm services and work
Technical SEO and measurement services · Web design in Ireland · Discuss qualified enquiry measurement
Updated 24 September 2026. Dave Curtin, founder and Creative Director of Brainstorm, leads website strategy, brand direction and technical delivery for Brainstorm clients.
Analytics is there to make decisions easier, and a prettier dashboard rarely does that.
The monthly report says traffic is up again, and the phone isn't ringing any more often than it was. Sessions, pageviews and bounce rate are vanity metrics for most service businesses. Agencies like them because they usually move the right way and they impress people who don't work in digital, but they rarely tell you whether anyone got in touch.
A site can draw plenty of visitors and still be worth little if they're bouncing off the pricing page or looking for a job. That traffic also muddies your data and can make a flat quarter look good. We'd rather measure intent.
Vanity metrics feel like progress
A rising line feels like work paying off, and it can be filed under brand awareness. For a service business, awareness doesn't cover payroll. We see teams publishing blog posts on a schedule to push traffic up while revenue stays flat.
Decide what a good day looks like first
Before we install a tracking script, we ask what a good day looks like. For most B2B service firms it's a completed enquiry form from someone who fits, or a booked consultation. On mobile, a tap on the phone number counts too.
Decide what "fits" means for you: work you want, in an area you cover, at a size worth taking on, from someone who can say yes. A student filling in the form for a college project is a submission, not a lead. Then put those outcomes at the top of your next report and make every other number earn its place.
Google Analytics needs setting up before it shows any of this
Out of the box, Google Analytics is much better at counting visits than outcomes. So we set up events for the actions that suggest someone is serious: downloading the prospectus, reaching the pricing table, starting the enquiry form, sending it.
Laid out as a funnel, those events show where people give up. If plenty of people read the Services page and hardly any click through to Contact, more traffic won't help; the problem is on the Services page.
For local businesses the phone is often where the enquiry happens, and form tracking can't see it. Dynamic number insertion (CallRail is one example) gives each visitor a number tied to their source, so calls can be traced to the search or ad behind them. Without it, if most of your work comes by phone, your best channel will look like your worst.
Reports built around what a lead costs
Managing directors don't lose sleep over bounce rate. They want to know what a lead costs and what the website contributes to revenue. Our reports leave most metrics out and follow two trends: whether qualified leads are up on last month, and whether each one cost less to win. A board will discuss that. A chart of sessions by device gets nodded through.
A weekly loop of small, unglamorous changes
Data that never changes what you do is just storage. We work in a weekly loop of hypothesis, test, release and measurement. Say the contact form looks too long: we take out two fields and check whether more people finish it.
No single change is dramatic, but they add up. A site adjusted weekly tends to pull ahead of one that's rebuilt every few years and left alone in between. The trade-off is patience. On a site with modest enquiry numbers a week often isn't long enough to see a difference, and some tests will make things worse.
Local search needs its own view
For local businesses, like our clients in Limerick and Shannon, measurement gets more specific. Take a search like web design Limerick: does it bring people to the homepage, or to a page written for that search? We also check whether nearby enquiries convert better than ones from further afield.
With local data separated out, the next move is usually plain enough: fewer town names scattered through headings, and more of whatever already brings in local work.
Related Brainstorm services and work
Technical SEO and measurement services · Web design in Ireland · Discuss qualified enquiry measurement
Updated 24 September 2026. Dave Curtin, founder and Creative Director of Brainstorm, leads website strategy, brand direction and technical delivery for Brainstorm clients.