- Visits tell you about traffic. The question that matters is which pages and sources lead to inquiries that become work.
- Tag the links you control with UTM parameters. Browsers usually pass only the other site's domain, not the page, so referrers alone are thin.
- First touch is how someone found you. Last touch is what brought them back to write in. Keep both.
- Pass the source and the pages read into the form, then into the CRM record, where your team will see them.
- Links from ChatGPT often carry utm_source=chatgpt.com, so many visits from it can be counted.
- Collect only what you'll use, say so in your privacy policy, and ask your counsel what consent you need.
The inquiry with no history
A good inquiry arrives on a Tuesday. A plant manager wants help connecting two systems. Your sales lead asks the obvious question: how did you hear about us? "Online, I think."
That answer is no help when you're deciding which pages to write next, or whether the guide you spent a month on did anything. The analytics dashboard shows visits by page. It doesn't show that this particular person read the integration page twice and a guide once before writing in.
The fix is less about new tools and more about passing a little context from the website into the place your team already works.
Start with the question, not the dashboard
Decide what you want to know before you change anything. For most companies it comes down to three questions:
- Where did the people who became real opportunities first find us?
- Which pages did they read before they got in touch?
- Which pages get plenty of visits and never start a conversation?
Notice that none of these is about page views. A page with a few dozen visits a month that starts two serious conversations a quarter is worth more than a popular post that starts none.
UTMs: label the links you control
UTM parameters are short labels added to the end of a link. They tell your analytics where a visit came from. Google's Analytics help says to always use three of them:
- utm_source: who sent the visit, such as a newsletter or a partner site.
- utm_medium: what kind of link it was, such as email or social.
- utm_campaign: what it was for, such as a specific guide or event.
Use them on every link you place yourself: your newsletter, your email signature, social posts, partner listings, slides you share after a talk. Agree on a short list of values and write it down. "Email," "email" and "e-mail" become three sources in a report, and nobody trusts the numbers after that.
Don't add UTMs to links between your own pages. They overwrite the original source and make every visit look like it came from your own site.
What the referrer can and can't tell you
When someone clicks a link from another site, the browser can tell your site where they came from. That is the referrer. It used to include the full address of the page they clicked on. These days it usually doesn't.
web.dev explains that major browsers now default to a policy that sends only the other site's domain on cross-site visits, not the specific page. So you'll often see that a visit came from a search engine or a news site, but not which result or article.
Some visits arrive with no referrer at all. Links opened from email apps, chat tools, documents and bookmarks often show up as "direct." That bucket is not people typing your address. It is mostly "we don't know."
This is why UTMs matter. The referrer is a hint. A UTM on a link you placed is a fact.
First touch and last touch
A typical path looks like this. Someone finds a guide through a search in March. They leave. In April they get your newsletter, click through and read two service pages. In May they search your company name and fill in the form.
Which source gets the credit?
- First touch credits the search in March. It tells you what introduces people to you.
- Last touch credits the name search in May. It tells you what brings them back to act, though a search for your name usually means something earlier did the real work.
Analytics tools offer their own models for spreading credit. Google Analytics, for example, offers a data-driven model and last-click options, after retiring first-click and several others in 2023. Those models are useful for advertising budgets. For a company with a modest number of inquiries, a simpler habit works better: record both the first and the latest source on every inquiry, and look at them side by side.
Pass the source and pages into the form
Here is the part most setups miss. The source and the pages read usually live in analytics, while the inquiry lives in email or the CRM. They never meet.
A small piece of code on your site can remember the first source of a visit, the latest one, and the last several pages someone read. When they submit a form, those details travel with it in hidden fields. The visitor types nothing extra.
From there, the inquiry should create a record in your CRM with those fields intact, as our guide on a website that feeds your systems describes. Now the person who picks it up can see that this inquiry read the integration page and a guide before writing in. The first reply gets better, and over time the pattern across many inquiries answers the questions you started with.
Our own site works this way. When an inquiry arrives, it shows which of our pages the person read first.
AI assistants as a source
More buyers ask an AI assistant before they ask a search engine. Some of those conversations end with a click to your site.
Links from ChatGPT often carry utm_source=chatgpt.com, so many of those visits can be counted in analytics. Not every link is tagged. Other assistants show up as referrers from their own domains, when a referrer is passed at all. Set up a simple saved view or report that groups these sources, so you can watch the trend.
Keep expectations sensible. Many people read an AI answer, then search for your name or type your address. Those visits will look like search or direct. The form's "How did you hear about us?" question still earns its place, because it catches what tracking can't.
Respect and privacy
Knowing which pages someone read can feel intrusive if it's handled carelessly. A few habits keep it respectful.
- Collect what you'll use. Source, the latest source and a short list of pages is enough. You don't need everything.
- Tie it to the inquiry, not to a stranger. Connecting browsing to a person when they choose to get in touch is very different from trying to identify every anonymous visitor.
- Say what you do. Your privacy policy should describe it accurately, in plain words.
- Mind the opening line. "I saw you were reading about connecting your systems" is helpful. Reciting every page they visited is not.
- Ask your counsel. Consent rules depend on where your visitors are and what you collect. That decision belongs with your counsel, and the site has to be built to follow it.
This isn't legal advice. It is the line most buyers would draw themselves.
What to look at each month
Fifteen minutes a month is enough if the data is in one place.
- Inquiries by first source and latest source, next to last month's.
- The pages that appear most often in the paths of inquiries that became real opportunities.
- Pages with plenty of visits that rarely appear in any inquiry's path. Improve them or stop investing in them.
- Visits and inquiries from AI assistants, as a trend.
- A test inquiry from a tagged link, followed all the way into the CRM, to confirm the fields still arrive.
Over a few months, a pattern appears. That pattern is what should decide which pages you write or improve next. Our guide on pages that bring in inquiries covers what to do with it.
What most guides miss
Small numbers are fine. If you get a few dozen inquiries a quarter, you won't have statistically tidy reports. You don't need them. Reading the paths of twenty real inquiries teaches you more than a dashboard of a hundred thousand visits.
The CRM is where the answer lives. Analytics knows the visits. Only the CRM knows which inquiries became work. Join them at the inquiry, or you'll be optimizing for form fills instead of clients.
Tracking breaks quietly. A site update renames a form field, and the source stops arriving. Nobody notices for months. A monthly test inquiry is the cheapest safeguard.
Ask anyway. A short "How did you hear about us?" field catches the referral from a colleague and the talk someone attended, which no tracking ever will.
How we do it
We start with a free intro call and follow one real inquiry from first visit to CRM record. Then we work alongside your team to carry the source and pages into every inquiry, in a way your privacy policy can describe plainly. See websites and content for more.
