Google Analytics is built for businesses of every size, which means most of what's in it is irrelevant to a small local service site with one phone number and one contact form. Checking it doesn't need to be a chore. It needs to be five reports, checked occasionally, and nothing else.
Traffic acquisition
This shows where visitors actually came from: search, a direct visit, a social link, a referral from another site. It answers the basic question of whether your marketing effort is reaching the site at all.
Landing pages
This shows which specific page a visitor arrived on first. If most traffic is landing on the homepage instead of a specific service page, that's worth knowing, since it usually means service pages aren't ranking or aren't being linked to well. See how to write a services page that ranks.
Conversions (once set up)
If a contact form submission or a click-to-call is set up as a tracked conversion, this report is the one that actually connects the website to real leads instead of just visits. See what is a conversion, and how do you track one.
Device category
This shows the phone-versus-desktop split of visitors. For most local service businesses, phone traffic dominates, and this report is a quick way to confirm the site is actually working well for the device most people are using.
Engagement time
A rough proxy for whether visitors are actually reading a page or bouncing off immediately. It's not precise, but a page with unusually low engagement time compared to others is worth a look.
What to ignore, at least at first
Real-time reports, demographic breakdowns, and most of the audience exploration tools are built for businesses running large-scale marketing operations. They're not wrong to have, they're just not where a small site's actual decisions get made.
Questions
How often should I actually check Analytics?
Monthly is plenty for most small businesses. Checking daily usually just produces noise, since day-to-day traffic naturally fluctuates.
Do I need Analytics if I already have Search Console?
They answer different questions. See Search Console vs. Analytics: what each one is actually for for the distinction.
Is Google Analytics free?
Yes, for the volume of traffic a small local business site generates. The paid tier exists for a scale most small businesses never approach.