How to Set Up GA4 Conversion Tracking: A Step-by-Step Guide

1 week ago

Editor’s note: On March 21, 2024, Google announced “conversions” would beryllium renamed arsenic “key events.” GA4 will proceed to usage nan word “conversions” successful only 1 circumstantial context: reports that measurement your Google Ads run performance. The rollout is gradual, truthful you whitethorn still spot nan word “conversion” successful your reports. We’ll update this article pinch nan latest accusation erstwhile nan modulation is complete.

Google Analytics 4 (GA4) tracks web interactions that are important for your business. They’re known arsenic conversions (or “key events”) and subordinate to really you execute business goals.

For example, a completed waste for an online shop is simply a conversion. The aforesaid goes for a shape submission connected a B2B tract aliases an online edifice reservation.

In this guide, you’ll study really to group up GA4 conversion search for your website. And really conversions (key events) tin thief you understand your business’s performance, truthful you tin make your trading efforts much effective.

Why Conversion Tracking Is Important

Conversion search turns Google Analytics 4 into a much powerful instrumentality that helps you understand if your website is doing its job. And lets you uncover insights astir your tract and web visitors that tin thief you thrust much business.

Let’s opportunity you’re a trading head for a dental believe pinch locations successful respective cities. And you want to get caller appointments from patients.

For you, conversions equate to assignment requests submitted done your website. In GA4, you group this arsenic a cardinal arena called “generate_lead.”

Here are 3 important things you’ll beryllium capable to study astir your business successful GA4:

1. Which Traffic Sources Perform Best

Conversion search reveals which postulation sources are champion helping you scope your goals. So you tin attraction your trading efforts and fund accordingly.

As you tin spot below, your tract produced 112 “generate_lead” conversions successful nan past 30 days. And you tin adhd a Google Analytics dimension (an property that helps you summation an in-depth knowing of your data) to your conversion information to spot its postulation sources.

In this case, you tin spot nan originating postulation root utilizing nan “Session root / medium” dimension.

Based connected nan supra data, you whitethorn determine to proceed focusing connected your integrated (meaning unpaid) hunt efforts. After all, integrated postulation from Google drives nan mostly of your conversions (key events).

You besides reason that your societal media efforts aren’t moving well. And determine to trial a caller attack connected Facebook to spot if it’s much effective.

2. How Profitable Your Google Ads Are

Google Ads information integrates pinch Google Analytics to show run performance. Which helps you negociate your fund because you tin spot really overmuch you’re paying for a caller diligent inquiry.

Let’s opportunity you’re consenting to walk up to $300 to get a caller patient. You tin spot that your mean “Cost per conversion” is $154.30—which is good wrong your budget.

The supra advertisement campaigns some make a akin costs per conversion. Should that alteration successful nan future, you’ll person nan accusation you request to reallocate nan fund betwixt campaigns.

You tin support an oculus connected this important metric each month. Ensuring that your campaigns proceed to beryllium profitable for your business.

3. What Characteristics You Should Know About Your Audience

You tin usage cardinal arena information successful civilization Google Analytics reports to study much astir nan group who usage your site. So you tin amended meet their preferences.

If you’re a dental believe trading head responsible for respective markets, you’ll want to cognize wherever your integer trading efforts execute best.

To get that information, create a study successful GA4 that shows nan metropolis and postulation root for each of your converting visitors. Like this one:

Now, you tin comparison your campaigns for each market. To tease retired what did and didn’t work.

Or possibly you want to redesign your website to make it faster and easier to usage for your patients. It’s adjuvant to cognize that complete 63% of your converted visitors utilized a mobile device.

With that knowledge, you tin attraction much connected nan mobile acquisition during nan web redesign process.

How GA4 Conversion Tracking Works

Google Analytics 4 collects each web interactions arsenic events—visitor interactions for illustration views, record downloads, scrolls, clicks, and purchases. They’re nan instauration of each search successful GA4 and basal to conversion (key event) tracking.

Google Analytics will grounds immoderate events by default without immoderate activity from you. You tin publication our GA4 arena search guide to study astir those.

But immoderate events for illustration shape submissions require you to group them up.

How to Set Up and See Conversions successful GA4

To commencement utilizing cardinal arena information, you request to place a valuable relationship and travel a fewer steps to way it.

Let’s spell backmost to our dental believe example.

As pinch galore different businesses, nan website generates caller customer inquiries done a interaction form. So, your first measurement is to way that important relationship arsenic an event.

Set Up a GA4 Event

To create an arena successful GA4, log successful to Google Analytics. Click “Admin” successful nan bottom-left area of immoderate screen.

From nan “Admin” area, click “Events” nether “Property settings” > “Data display” from nan left-hand navigation barroom aliases successful nan main view.

Then, click “Create event” to group up a caller civilization event.

And click “Create” erstwhile more.

You’ll spot an arena configuration model wherever you tin commencement by naming your arena successful nan “Custom arena name” field. This is nan sanction you’ll spot successful your reports whenever nan arena takes place.

Choose thing for illustration “form_submission,” “thank_you_page,” aliases “generate_lead.” The second matches Google’s recommendation.

Now, it’s clip to group nan matching conditions that will find erstwhile your “generate_lead” arena fires.

Your interaction shape redirects to a convey you page erstwhile it’s submitted. So, you tin look for views of that page to grounds your civilization event.

You’ll request 2 conditions to execute that.

First, group nan pursuing parameter truthful nan arena sanction equals “page_view.” This limits your civilization arena only to interactions wherever a caller page is loading.

Click nan “Add condition” button.

Then, group your adjacent information to limit your civilization arena to your convey you page.

Set nan “Parameter” by typing “page_location” aliases choosing it from nan drop-down list. Set nan “Operator” to “contains.”

Type nan page way of your convey you page URL successful nan “Value” field. Your page way is nan portion of nan URL that comes aft nan domain name.

Adjust nan worth depending connected nan circumstantial URL of nan convey you page connected your site.

Finally, click “Create.”

Once you do, you’ll spot your caller civilization arena successful a summary list.

You’re now signaling arena information that you tin find successful your GA4 reports. But it won’t count arsenic a conversion (key event) until you return an other step.

Mark an Event arsenic a Key Event

Now that you’ve created your civilization event, click “Conversions” nether “Admin” > “Property settings” > “Data display” to group up GA4 conversion events. Then, click “New conversion event.”

Type nan sanction of your caller arena successful nan “New arena sanction *” section and click “Save.”

Your caller conversion arena will look successful a list.

Next, let’s reappraisal wherever to find your conversion data.

View Your Conversion Reports successful GA4

Google Analytics has a built-in study wherever you tin spot each your conversions (key events).

To get there, click “Reports” from nan left-hand navigation bar. Select “Engagement” followed by “Conversions.”

You’ll spot a study listing immoderate conversion events you’ve created truthful far. And a floor plan showing really often they hap complete time.

To get much information, adhd a secondary magnitude by clicking nan “+” motion adjacent to nan arena name.

A dialog container will look showing various dimensions for much granular analysis.

Click “Traffic source” to analyse wherever your conversions came from.

Then, prime “Cross-channel” followed by “Session root / medium.”

This is simply a measurement to place your astir important Google Analytics postulation sources—what’s moving well. It besides helps you uncover postulation sources wherever you mightiness person opportunities to effort caller tactics.

For example, nan postulation information shows only a azygous conversion from Facebook. This mightiness awesome that it’s clip to look deeper astatine your societal media contented strategy.

Here are a fewer ways to get moreover much insights astir your conversions:

Conversion Rates

Your conversion complaint tells you really efficiently users are converting. To thief you understand whether there’s room for improvement.

There are 2 conversion rates successful GA4:

Session conversion (key event) rate: The number of sessions (visits) resulting successful a conversion divided by nan full number of sessions. And multiplied by 100 to get a percentage.
User conversion (key event) rate: The number of users (unique visitors) pinch a conversion divided by nan full number of users. Also multiplied by 100.

Going backmost to our dental believe scenario, let’s opportunity your website receives 10,000 visits successful 1 period and generates 105 conversions. Your convention conversion complaint is 1.05%.

But galore of your visitors travel to nan tract much than erstwhile complete that period. The full number of users is 5,000. And truthful your personification cardinal arena complaint is 2.10%.

You mightiness take to analyse 1 aliases nan different depending connected what mobility you’re trying to answer. And nan insights you’re looking to glean. For instance:

How apt is simply a azygous sojourn to consequence successful a conversion? Look into convention conversion rate.
What are nan chances that a visitant will yet convert? User conversion complaint tin thief here.

Let’s opportunity you want to forecast conversions based connected a postulation goal.

For example, your activity squad wants to summation website postulation by 20,000 visits successful nan twelvemonth ahead. You tin expect that this will person a business effect of 210 caller assignment requests (20,000 x .0105 = 210).

Here’s really you tin get conversion complaint information successful your GA4 reports.

First, click “Traffic acquisition” from nan “Acquisition” drop-down of your GA4 reports section.

You’ll spot 2 graphs astatine nan apical and a elaborate information array below. Your conversion (key event) counts are visible successful nan 2nd file from nan right, alongside different important metrics for illustration “Users” and “Sessions.”

Click nan pencil icon successful nan apical correct to customize your report.

You’ll spot a “Customize report” model to nan right. Click “Metrics.”

Now, click nan “Add metric” section astatine nan bottommost of your metrics list. You tin besides delete immoderate irrelevant metrics from your array by clicking “x.”

Begin typing “conversion” and prime “Session conversion rate” erstwhile it appears. Your database of metrics will alteration to see your caller addition. Click “Apply” to update your reporting view.

You’ll now spot a caller file astatine nan acold correct of your table: “Session conversion rate.” By default, this will show nan conversion complaint for each your conversion events.

Click nan down arrow to nan correct of “All events” to take which circumstantial conversion arena you want to analyze.

Choose your desired conversion from nan dialog container and your study information will refresh.

In this case, we only person nan azygous “generate_lead” conversion (remember that “purchase” is simply a GA4 conversion by default). Click connected it.

The file header will update automatically truthful you tin spot what you’re analyzing.

To make your changes to nan study permanent, click “Save” arsenic shown below. Then, prime “Save changes to existent report.”

Click “Save” 1 past time.

As you proceed to create caller GA4 events and people them arsenic arena conversions, you’ll beryllium capable to usage your conversion complaint information to analyse individual conversions.

Attribution

Attribution is nan process of assigning “credit” for conversions (key events) to various Google Analytics postulation sources.

Let’s opportunity you had a visitant who purchased from your ecommerce tract aft 3 visits.

The first sojourn came done integrated search
The 2nd sojourn came from email marketing
The 3rd sojourn was via integrated societal media

Google Analytics tin springiness each nan in installments to societal media for driving nan past visit—called last-click attribution. Or usage data-driven attribution, which gives GA4 nan elasticity to admit aggregate channels.

The data-driven attribution exemplary is nan default and what Google recommends. Google says this exemplary is advertiser-specific and uses information unsocial to each website and advertiser to in installments conversions properly.

You tin comparison nan attribution models utilizing GA4’s exemplary comparison report.

Start by clicking “Advertising” from nan left-hand navigation menu. Then, click “Model comparison” to spot nan 2 attribution models broadside by side.

For this peculiar ecommerce business, you tin spot that nan data-driven exemplary assigns much in installments to email and little to integrated societal than nan last-click model.

Conversion Paths

Conversion paths thief you understand each nan postulation sources factored into your conversions.

Let’s spell backmost to our dental believe illustration and click nan “Conversion paths” report. By default, this study will show information for each conversion events combined.

If you want to limit your conversion way study to a azygous conversion (key event), click nan “conversion events” drop-down astatine nan apical of nan page. Use nan toggles to take a conversion and click “Apply.”

You’ll spot which paths are astir communal for that circumstantial conversion. In this case, nan astir communal conversion way is 2 abstracted visits via integrated search.

To alteration really you group postulation sources, click nan “Default transmission group” drop-down arrow.

You’ll spot a dialog container pinch different postulation root options. Here’s what they mean:

Source: The circumstantial root sending nan postulation (like Google, Bing, aliases DuckDuckGo)
Medium: The type of postulation (like integrated aliases cost per click)
Campaign: Traffic coming from a circumstantial trading campaign
Session transmission group: Rule-based definitions of postulation groups (for example, nan integrated hunt channel)

Select “Medium” to group your conversion postulation based connected nan type of postulation that drove nan visit.

Further reading: Google Analytics Traffic Sources: An In-Depth Guide

Limitations of GA4 Conversion Tracking

There are respective limitations to GA4 conversions, which we outline below.

Few Conversion Types

There isn’t a elemental measurement to way convention long conversions aliases pages/screens per convention conversions.

Since everything is an arena successful GA4, these types of conversions aren’t disposable arsenic they are successful immoderate Google Analytics alternatives.

Some Tracking Requires Google Tag Manager

You can’t way everything pinch only GA4. For immoderate things, you request to usage Google Tag Manager to assistance pinch nan setup process.

Examples see fastener click tracking, submitted forms that don’t redirect to a convey you page, and ecommerce tracking.

Limited Attribution Options

You tin only usage last-click aliases data-driven attribution pinch GA4.

Other web analytics devices see further options for illustration these:

First-click attribution gives 100% of nan in installments to nan transmission that brought nan first visit, sloppy of erstwhile nan visitant converted
Linear attribution splits nan in installments arsenic crossed immoderate and each postulation sources progressive successful nan visitor’s travel earlier conversion
Time-decay attribution assigns astir of nan in installments to nan postulation root that brought nan last visit, pinch decreasing in installments assigned to preceding visits

In GA4, you don’t person nan elasticity to position immoderate different of these attribution models.

No Assisted Conversions Report

There isn’t a dedicated assisted conversions study successful GA4 that summarizes really galore times each postulation transmission participated successful a conversion path.

Use nan conversion paths study we outlined earlier to visualize nan various postulation channels that contributed to your conversions.

The Next Step After GA4 Conversion Analysis

When you person nan conversion information to understand your website, you tin spot really to thrust capacity into nan future.

Let’s opportunity your dental believe aspires to get 50% much caller patients successful nan adjacent 12 months. And you admit that driving much integrated postulation is 1 of nan astir feasible ways to do that.

Keyword Magic Tool is simply a awesome measurement to commencement moving connected your postulation maturation goals.

For example, you mightiness hunt for “pain free dentistry” because patients person precocious started asking astir this.

Enter nan keyword and click “Search” to spot if they’ve been searching astir it arsenic well.

With a comparatively precocious hunt measurement (“Volume”) and debased keyword trouble (“KD %”), some “pain free dentistry” and “pain free dentistry adjacent me” person awesome potential.

You’ve already spotted a awesome opportunity that you could target pinch a caller work page aliases elaborate blog post.

And you could see a nexus to your assignment petition shape wrong that contented to thief thrust readers toward converting.