How to Measure Website Success with GA4: Acquisition vs Landing Pages
20 April 2026
A Digital Dispatch by Sian Jamieson, Partnership Lead
Following on from our previous posts on understanding your traffic and website engagement, the next step is to look at something slightly different: Where are people coming from, and where are they actually landing?
Health Signal 3: Acquisition vs Landing Pages
A big part of digital communications is about encouraging action. That might be clicking through to learn more, signing up, donating, or taking part in something.
And when your website is your home base, everything you do on social media, SEO, email campaigns or digital PR is ultimately going to be about guiding people there.
Now, of course, acquisition isn’t the only measure of success. We all know the real world matters too – people turning up to events, becoming members, or simply talking about your work offline.
But if driving traffic to your website is part of your strategy (and your budget), then it’s worth asking: Are people arriving where you expect and does that match what you want them to do next?
What Does Website Acquisition Actually Mean?
Acquisition tells you how people arrive at your website. Landing pages tell you where they land once they get there. In GA4, acquisition shows you where your visitors are coming from:
- search engines
- social media
- email campaigns
- referrals from other websites
- direct visits.
But here’s the important bit, acquisition isn’t just about traffic. It’s about understanding which of your efforts are actually bringing the right people to your website, and whether they’re arriving in the right place when they get there.
Why this relationship matters
Looking at acquisition or landing pages on their own can be useful, but the real insight comes when you look at them together. This is where you can tell if things are in sync.
For example:
- You might be sharing a campaign on social media, expecting people to land on a specific campaign page… but most of that traffic is actually landing on your homepage.
- You might be investing time in SEO, only to find that Google is sending people to older blog posts instead of your key service or conversion pages.
- You might be sending out email campaigns that link to the right page… but once people arrive, they don’t go any further.
None of these are necessarily “bad”, but they are signals that something isn’t quite lining up.
Step 1: Check which channels are bringing people in
Where to go in GA4: Reports → Acquisition → Traffic acquisition
This report shows where your sessions are coming from; search, social, direct, referrals, email, and so on. At a high level, this is where you sense-check whether your digital efforts are actually translating into traffic.
What to look at
Sessions
From a top-level perspective, this is your starting point. Does the work you’re putting into driving traffic stack up against what you can see here? If you’re investing heavily in social, you’d expect to see that reflected here. If not, that’s worth exploring.
Engaged sessions
This refers to sessions where users:
- stay longer than 10 seconds
- view more than one page
- or take action.
Different channels behave differently:
- Social traffic is often lower (quick visits)
- Direct traffic is often higher (intentional visits)
- Search varies – but strong engagement usually means good alignment
- Referral depends on who is linking to you
If referral traffic is high but engagement is low, it’s worth checking where those links are coming from.
Average engagement time per session
This is about how long people are actively engaging, not just how long the page is open.
Context matters:
- Social users tend to spend the least time (they’re being pulled back to the platform)
- Other sources (search, direct, referral) often show longer engagement.
If social traffic shows 5–7 seconds, don’t panic. Instead, try this:
- Pick one of your key landing pages from social.
- Open it. Scroll it. Scan it. Time yourself.
Is 5–7 seconds enough to:
- understand what the page is about?
- spot the key message?
- find the main call to action?
If not, that’s a useful insight. It may not be about driving more traffic, it may be about making the page work better for quick visits.
If you’re seeing closer to a minute or more for other channels, that’s generally a good sign that people are taking the time to engage.
Bounce rate
This is the percentage of people who arrive… and leave without engaging.
A high bounce rate can mean:
- the pages they landed on didn’t meet expectations
- there’s no clear next step
- pages act like dead ends.
But, and this is important, it’s not always negative. If someone:
- Googles a question
- lands on your page
- gets what they need
- leaves.
That’s technically a bounce, but still a successful visit. This is why it’s important to look at bounce rate alongside engagement time. For example:
- High bounce + 0 seconds engagement → likely a problem
- High bounce + decent engagement time → possibly fine.
Go to a level deeper
To get more granular, change the Primary Dimension to: Session source / medium
This allows you to see the same metrics broken down in more detail – for example ‘google / organic’, ‘linkedin / social’ and ‘direct / (none)’ etc. It’s a simple step, but it often reveals patterns you wouldn’t see at a higher level.
Step 2: Check where people are landing first
Where to go in GA4: Reports → Engagement → Landing page
Start with the bigger picture
I always recommend looking at this in two ways:
1. A year in review
This gives you a big-picture view of how your website is working overall.
You’re looking for:
- Do your key pages appear in the top 5–10 landing pages?
- If not, why not?
- What is showing up – and does that reflect what your organisation does?
Often, this tells you something really important: how people are actually using your website, not just how you think they are. Your top landing pages are a strong signal of what matters most to your audience.
2. A more focused time period (quarter, campaign period, monthly etc.)
Once you’ve looked at the year, zoom in. This helps you understand:
- how specific campaigns performed,
- how behaviour changes over time,
- whether improvements you’ve made are working.
What to look at (and what it tells you)
Landing page + Sessions
Start here. Which pages are coming out on top?
- Does this make sense based on your activity?
- Are there any surprises?
- Are important pages missing?
If something feels off, that’s your cue to dig deeper.
Active Users vs Sessions
This helps you understand who is visiting vs how often. For example:
- 101 active users
- 163 sessions
That means 101 people visited the page 163 times. So:
- If sessions are much higher than users → people are coming back
- If they’re very similar → most people visit once.
Neither is necessarily bad, depending on the time period you’re viewing. Ask yourself:
- Do we want repeat visits (members, resources, campaigns)?
- Or are we trying to reach new audiences?
New Users
This is the number of people who visited your site for the first time during the selected time period (not all-time). This is a really important metric. It tells you which pages are acting as entry points for brand new audiences. So look at:
- Which pages bring in new users?
- Are they your campaign pages?
- Your blogs?
- Your homepage?
If certain pages consistently attract new users, they’re doing an important job, and worth paying closer attention to.
Average engagement time per session
This shows how long people are actively engaging with the page (not just how long it’s open). It includes:
- scrolling
- clicking
- interacting.
This helps you understand if people are actually engaging or just passing through? But context matters:
- 5–10 seconds can be completely normal (especially for social traffic).
- Longer times often suggest deeper engagement.
If a number feels low, test it. Can you understand what the page is about and what to do next? If not, it’s a useful signal that something needs adjusting.
Step 3: Compare source and landing page together
This is where things start to get really interesting. Up to now, you’ve looked at:
- where people are coming from (Acquisition)
- where they’re landing (Landing Pages)
But the real insight comes when you connect the two.
Where to go in GA4: Reports → Acquisition → Traffic acquisition
Your Primary Dimension will be set to ‘Session Primary Channel Group’ (i.e. organic social, direct, organic search, referral etc). Change this to ‘session source/ medium’ for more granular insights.
Now add a secondary dimension.
- Click on the ‘+’ next to the default channel group.
- Search for ‘landing page + query string’ and add this.
You can now see precisely which route people took to get to your website and their first landing page. This is a lot of information to digest, and requires a fine tooth comb to run through, but it gives you the most accurate insights into how your work driving traffic to your website is working.
If you want to look at specific traffic sources or landing pages, you can use the search function to pinpoint a specific acquisition source (i.e facebook or Google) or a specific landing page url extension.
Why this matters
A channel can look healthy on the surface, driving lots of traffic, but still be underperforming if it’s sending people to the wrong place or when people arrive there is no meaningful engagement.
What Happens After Landing?
Getting people to the right page is important, but what happens next also matters.
In the next post, we’ll look at what people do after they land and how to tell whether your website is turning visits into meaningful action.
PS – A little health warning: If GA4 is tracking your website visitors before they’ve granted permission, you’re on the wrong side of the ICO.
PPS – PPS – If you’d like help interpreting your analytics or improving your website’s performance, feel free to drop me (Sian Jamieson) an email.
And for all of your Digital Privacy needs, please get in touch with our Data Privacy Specialist, Mads Mitchell.
Get In Touch
We’d love to hear what you’re up to. Please get in touch using hello@pooka.co or through the form linked below. Don’t be shy!
