A homepage dashboard: five numbers to check each month

Key takeaways

A homepage dashboard needs only five numbers each month: homepage sessions, the share that click to a service page or contact route, key events from homepage sessions, the mobile-versus-desktop gap and Largest Contentful Paint on mobile. Read them together with a change log, and you will spot most homepage problems within a month.

• 5 numbers: sessions, next-step rate, key events, mobile gap, LCP.
• Read monthly, compared with the previous four weeks.
• Keep a change log next to it.
• One page in a spreadsheet or Looker Studio is enough.

What should a homepage dashboard show?

A homepage dashboard should show whether the right visitors arrive, whether they move forward and whether the page works on phones. Five numbers cover that for most small businesses. More metrics usually mean less attention to the ones that matter.

• Why your homepage is not converting visitors into customers
• Website goals and KPIs for small businesses

What are the five numbers?

These are the GBL homepage dashboard metrics, a working rule of thumb rather than a standard.

• Homepage sessions: is traffic stable?
• Next-step rate: share of homepage sessions that click to a service page or contact route.
• Key events from homepage sessions: enquiries, calls, bookings.
• Mobile gap: mobile key event rate compared with desktop.
• Mobile LCP: how fast the hero appears on phones.

• Track homepage button clicks in GA4
• Core Web Vitals on your homepage: what to fix first
• Mobile and desktop in GA4: find where phones lose enquiries

Where do the numbers come from?

Sessions, next-step clicks and key events come from GA4. The mobile gap comes from the same report split by device. LCP comes from PageSpeed Insights or Search Console's Core Web Vitals report. Put them in a spreadsheet or a free Looker Studio dashboard, one row per month.

• Check your homepage's performance in GA4
• What Search Console says about your homepage

How do you read the dashboard?

Look for changes, then explain them. Sessions down with everything else steady points to traffic. Next-step rate down points to the page. A growing mobile gap points to the mobile layout. Check the change log and the season before acting.

• Change one thing at a time: a homepage change log
• Homepage conversions dropped after a change? Check these

When do you need more than five numbers?

When you are investigating a specific problem, such as a drop in one channel or a test of a new hero. Then add the extra metrics for that investigation and remove them afterwards. The monthly dashboard should stay small enough to read in 15 minutes.

• Homepage conversion by traffic source
• A/B testing a homepage with little traffic

What does this look like in practice?

A pattern we see: a 20-tab analytics report nobody reads. Replacing it with five homepage numbers on one page, reviewed on the first Monday of each month, usually leads to the first real homepage improvement within a quarter, simply because problems become visible.

• See client work
• Website Design & Development for UK businesses

Homepage dashboard checklist

• Set up click tracking so next-step rate can be measured.
• Create one row per month for the five numbers.
• Add a column for changes and notes.
• Review it monthly in 15 minutes.
• Act only on changes you can explain.

• Homepage conversion by traffic source
• A/B testing a homepage with little traffic

Next step

Create a spreadsheet with five columns and fill in last month's numbers today. That is your baseline.