Guide
The 5 numbers every small business should track weekly
Ignore 50+ dashboards. These 5 tell you if the business is healthy.
1) Traffic (unique visitors, weekly)
In GA4: Reports, Acquisition, Traffic Acquisition. Total 'Users' for the week. Trend line matters more than absolute number. Is it growing?
2) Conversion rate (visitors, buyers)
% of visitors who did the thing you wanted. E-commerce: 1 to 3% is normal. Service business form fill: 3 to 8%. Under 1%: check landing pages, offer, or targeting.
3) CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost)
Total marketing spend, new customers. If you spent $500 on ads/email/tools and got 10 customers, CAC = $50. Compare to your average customer profit. CAC should be under 30% of first-purchase profit ideally.
4) AOV (Average Order Value)
Total revenue, number of orders. Trend it. If AOV is falling: pricing, promotion mix, or product mix is off. If rising: healthy sign.
5) LTV (Customer Lifetime Value, best estimate)
Average purchases per customer x average order value. Even a rough guess helps. LTV, CAC ratio should be 3+ (you make $3 for every $1 spent acquiring). Under 1 = you're paying to work.
Ignore vanity metrics
Impressions, reach, followers, likes: none of these directly connect to revenue. They're useful signals sometimes but never the primary metric. Don't confuse growth with popularity.
Track in ONE spreadsheet
Google Sheets, one tab per metric, one column per week. That's it. Fancy dashboards are for enterprise. Small businesses need weekly discipline, not visualization tools.
That’s the whole thing.
Keep going
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