Lead

A lead is a visitor who has shared contact information or clear intent to be contacted—usually by submitting a form, booking a demo, calling, or starting a chat. In analytics terms, a lead sits between a raw visit and a revenue event: it’s a qualified hand-raise you can track, optimize, and hand off to sales. Leads are a core step in most funnels after the Landing Page hit and before a purchase or contract.

How do you count a lead?

Define a single, unambiguous event (e.g., “form_submit” on your primary contact form). Do not count micro-signals like newsletter opt-ins unless they’re truly sales-relevant. Tie the lead event to a Goal (Goal, Goal Completion) and place it inside your Goal Funnel so you can see drop-offs from view → engage → submit.

Common sources:

• Form submission (Form Submission)
• Call click / phone reveal
• Chat started with email capture
• Quote request / demo request

Lead rate & cost basics

Short formulae you’ll use daily:

• Lead Rate = Leads ÷ Sessions (or Users)
  Be consistent with the denominator.
  Example: 250 leads from 5,000 sessions → 5%.
• Cost per Lead (CPL) = Ad Spend ÷ Leads
  Example: $5,000 ÷ 250 → $20 CPL.

Mini table:

Metric	Value
Sessions	5,000
Leads	250
Lead Rate	5%
Ad Spend	$5,000
Cost per Lead	$20

Why leads matter in web analytics

Leads connect marketing activity to sales outcomes. Map traffic sources with UTMs (UTM Parameters) and evaluate efficiency by channel: Lead Rate, CPL, and downstream Conversion Rate (Conversion Rate). For a realistic picture, use an Attribution Model (e.g., first/last/multi-touch) to credit the channels involved, then compare against unit economics like Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) (Cost Per Acquisition (CPA)).

Implementation tips

• One canonical lead event; deduplicate retries and spam.
• Track critical pre-lead interactions as Events (Event Count) to diagnose friction (validation errors, slow load, etc.).
• Separate macro lead (sales-ready) from micro lead (newsletter) if both exist (Macro Conversion / Micro Conversion).