Note (October 2026): Earlier versions of this article described bounce rate as time spent on a page and said unique visitors are counted by IP address. Both are corrected below for Google Analytics 4, which replaced Universal Analytics in July 2023.
The five web analytics metrics healthcare marketing managers should track are bounce rate (or its inverse, engagement rate), top landing pages, top exit pages, new and returning users, and on-site search terms. In Google Analytics 4, each is available through standard reports or the Explore section, and tracking on patient-facing pages must respect HIPAA privacy rules.
Key Takeaways
- In Google Analytics 4, bounce rate is the percentage of sessions that were not engaged, not the time a visitor spends on a page.
- Landing pages show where patients enter the site; Entrances and Exits are available in GA4 Explore without extra setup.
- GA4 reports Total users, New users, Returning users and Active users, and Google says GA4 does not log or store IP addresses.
- GA4 enhanced measurement records site searches automatically through the view_search_results event.
- US healthcare providers should keep tracking technologies off authenticated pages such as patient portals unless HIPAA requirements are met.
As the healthcare industry makes strides in adapting to the digital age, the importance of healthcare marketing managers has vastly increased.
They are responsible for handling the online footprints of these healthcare organizations and making crucial decisions which can benefit or destroy said business.
It can be difficult to know what to do in an ever-expanding industry. When this article was first published in 2019, it reported that a lack of technology had been the biggest concern of healthcare marketers in 2018; that survey finding has not been independently confirmed.
Despite this, there are ways that you can use current technology to improve the results of the healthcare organization you’re marketing with the analytics tools available today.
The basics are straightforward to set up, although interpreting the data takes practice.
All you need is a reliable analytics software that can break down the data you’re receiving from your users to work out what is and isn’t working.
This will allow you to implement the appropriate changes to grow the healthcare organization by scaling up strategies that do work, and forgetting those that don’t.
1] Your bounce rate
Your bounce rate is one of the most basic analytical pieces of data you can receive from your analytics software tracking, and it’s quite simple to understand.
In Google Analytics 4, bounce rate is the percentage of sessions that were not engaged. Google counts a session as engaged when it lasts longer than 10 seconds, includes a key event, or has two or more page or screen views. Time on page is a separate measurement.
You might not think this matters, but as a healthcare organization, you need people to pay attention to your website for quite some time to increase online conversions and engagement rates.
A recent study from Microsoft is often cited as proof that people lose concentration within seconds. In fact, the 2015 Microsoft Canada consumer report did not itself produce the widely repeated eight-second attention-span figure, which traced back to a website called Statistic Brain and was not supported by research when the BBC investigated it. Engaging visitors quickly still matters, but that statistic should not be relied on.
One of the best ways to reduce your bounce rate is to make sure that the content on your website is interesting enough to keep people looking around.
Your target audience might be looking to expand their knowledge by visiting several different pages of your website, or their curiosity may overcome them when they see what they have to offer.
The truth of the matter is that, if your bounce rate is too high, your content isn’t engaging people enough-and that includes your target audience!
2] The performance of your top landing pages
As a marketer in any industry, finding out the pages that your target audience are drawn towards is incredibly important.
In the healthcare industry, however, finding out what parts of your websites people are landing on when entering your site for the first time is an incredibly important metric.
It tells you what your target audience are seeking out, and what information from your website that they find useful.
It also provides you with a unique opportunity to market the healthcare organization through these popular landing pages.
You should optimize them as much as possible to continue growing them, by targeting relevant keywords.
You can also use these landing pages to guide visitors to a clear next step, such as booking an appointment or calling the clinic. In healthcare, artificial urgency can mislead patients, so a plain call to action with accurate information works better.
With that being said, it’s important not to make the landing page look crowded with complicated information once popularity has occurred, as this can turn people away and turn your once-thriving landing page into a deserted wasteland.
Not sure how to measure the performance of a landing page? There are many web analytics services out there who can help you out.
3] Your top exit pages
Just like landing pages are important to see what people are interested in, it’s also important to see what pages are making people leave your website.
You can find this information in Google Analytics 4 or another analytics platform of your choice. In GA4, the Exits metric (how many times the last event in a session happened on a page) is available in the Explore section without extra configuration.
Once you’ve found these exit pages, you should work to lower the amount of site visitors who are lost through them.
It’s important not to delete these posts, however, as that can have a negative impact on your search engine optimization capabilities.
The things you need to look at as a healthcare marketer aren’t that complicated, however.
Even looking at the smaller elements, like the language used, can reveal a lot about why your target audience aren’t connecting with the site.
Are you using medical jargon that people without clinical training cannot understand?
Are you making things overly complicated? When it comes to online marketing, scaremongering isn’t an effective health education tool.
You might also discover that these exit pages are sending your traffic to other websites that provide them with further information, giving them no reason to continue reading your own.
If this is the case, review whether those outbound links are needed on that page or could be moved lower down. If you want to be extra cautious, try adding an additional inbound link in that space instead.
4] The amount of unique visitors your website receives
Google Analytics 4 reports unique visitors as users. New users are people who logged a first_visit or first_open event, and returning users are people who had at least one previous session.
These numbers are based mainly on identifiers such as first-party cookies stored in your audience’s browsers. According to Google, GA4 does not log or store IP addresses, so IP addresses are not used to count users in reports.
You might think this isn’t necessarily important as a healthcare marketer, but you’d be wrong.
Knowing the amount of people who’re visiting your website for the first time, or the first time in a while, will enable you to understand what is causing spikes in your performance as time goes on.
Are you using content marketing as a way of spreading awareness about local healthcare trends in your community?
Perhaps you’re discussing something in the media which inaccurately represents a condition, and the reality you’re discussing resonates with lots of people?
Maybe it’s a marketing strategy, and the influencers you’ve used are bringing in these increased numbers of unique visitors?
Knowing what causes these unexpected spikes will also help you during quieter traffic times on the website, as it will enable you to figure out a strategy to boost traffic again.
5] The custom searches made on your website
If you don’t have a custom search engine tracker as part of your web analytics service, you need to add one.
This will enable you to see exactly what people are searching for. In Google Analytics 4, enhanced measurement records site searches automatically as the view_search_results event when the search URL uses one of five query parameters: q, s, search, query or keyword.
It will also help you to identify where the website goes wrong, because if people cannot find something you think is important, they will go elsewhere for their information, increasing the website’s bounce rate.
These custom searches will also help to identify exactly what the target audience wants to see on this website.
Knowing this information will allow you to produce more of the same, growing the business by increasing conversions and engagements across the board.
How Do These Metrics Map to Google Analytics 4?
Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is the current version of Google Analytics. According to Google, standard Universal Analytics properties stopped processing data on July 1, 2023, and Analytics 360 properties lost access to Universal Analytics data on July 1, 2024. Older guides that describe bounce rate as time on page or count unique visitors by IP address refer to the retired system or are inaccurate.
| Metric in this article | GA4 name | Where to find it | What it tells a healthcare marketer |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bounce rate | Bounce rate / Engagement rate | Reports (add the metric) or Explore | Share of sessions with no meaningful engagement |
| Top landing pages | Landing page dimension, Entrances | Reports and Explore | Which service, condition or location pages attract new patients |
| Top exit pages | Exits | Explore | Where visitors end their session |
| Unique visitors | Total users, New users, Returning users, Active users | Reports | Audience growth and loyalty |
| Custom site searches | view_search_results event, Search term | Reports and Explore (enhanced measurement on) | What visitors cannot find through navigation |
Google defines an engaged session as one that lasts longer than 10 seconds, has a key event, or has two or more page or screen views. Engagement rate is the percentage of engaged sessions, so engagement rate and bounce rate always add up to 100 percent.
What Do HIPAA Rules Mean for Healthcare Website Analytics?
US healthcare providers, health plans and their business associates must consider the HIPAA Privacy Rule when adding analytics or advertising tags to their websites. The US Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights (OCR) issued guidance on online tracking technologies in December 2022 and revised it in March 2024.
In June 2024, a federal district court in Texas ruled in American Hospital Association v. Becerra and vacated the part of that guidance covering unauthenticated public web pages. HHS dropped its appeal on August 29, 2024, so that ruling is final. The guidance for authenticated pages, such as patient portals that require a login, was not affected, according to a September 2024 analysis by the law firm Morrison Foerster.
In practice, many healthcare organizations keep marketing and analytics tags off patient portals, avoid sending form contents or appointment details as event parameters, and review vendor agreements with their compliance team. Google also states that personally identifiable information must not be collected through enhanced measurement. This article is general information, not legal advice. For hosting choices, see this guide to selecting HIPAA compliant web hosting.
How to Set Up These Five Metrics in GA4
- Confirm the GA4 tag is installed on every public page of the site and that enhanced measurement is switched on in the web data stream settings.
- Check that the site search URL uses a query parameter GA4 recognizes (q, s, search, query or keyword), or add the custom parameter in enhanced measurement settings.
- Mark the actions that matter, such as appointment requests or calls, as key events so engaged sessions and landing-page results reflect real outcomes.
- Build a free-form exploration with a page path dimension and the Views, Entrances and Exits metrics to compare landing and exit pages side by side.
- Tag email, social and paid campaign links with UTM parameters so traffic spikes can be traced to their source. A query string builder helps assemble those links correctly.
- Review the numbers monthly and compare the same period year over year, because many healthcare services have seasonal demand.
Common Mistakes When Reading Healthcare Website Data
- Treating a high bounce rate as failure on every page. A visitor who finds a clinic phone number on a single page and leaves within 10 seconds counts as a non-engaged session, even though the page did its job.
- Comparing Universal Analytics and GA4 figures directly. The two systems define bounce rate differently, so pre-2023 numbers are not like-for-like.
- Deleting high-exit pages. Some pages, such as contact or directions pages, are natural end points of a visit.
- Ignoring privacy rules. Tracking on authenticated pages can create HIPAA exposure, as described above.
- Reading spikes without context. Campaign tagging and notes about local news or media coverage make traffic changes explainable.
For broader context, see these guides on using marketing analytics to improve revenue, avoiding falling website traffic and how web and UX design support digital marketing campaigns.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a good bounce rate for a healthcare website?
There is no single official benchmark for a good healthcare bounce rate, because it depends on page type and traffic source. A contact page can have a high bounce rate and still work well. The most useful comparison is a page against its own past performance in Google Analytics 4.
How is bounce rate calculated in Google Analytics 4?
Bounce rate in Google Analytics 4 is the percentage of sessions that were not engaged. A session is engaged if it lasts longer than 10 seconds, has a key event, or includes two or more page or screen views.
Where are exit pages in GA4?
Exit pages in GA4 are found in the Explore section. Create a free-form exploration, add a page path dimension and the Exits metric; Google says no extra configuration is needed to collect entrances and exits.
Can healthcare websites use Google Analytics under HIPAA?
Healthcare websites face fewer federal restrictions on public pages since the June 2024 American Hospital Association v. Becerra ruling, but OCR guidance on authenticated pages such as patient portals still applies. Organizations should check vendor agreements and data flows with their compliance or legal team.
Does Google Analytics 4 track unique visitors by IP address?
No. According to Google, GA4 does not log or store IP addresses. GA4 counts users through identifiers such as first-party cookies rather than IP addresses.
