Comprehensive guide to the tracking potential using GA4

Website tracking is often consigned to the set-up of simple pageviews and a couple of other basic actions. But there’s a myriad of additional actions to track, information to pass to tools like Google Analytics 4 and things to learn. Learn a mix of best-practice GA4 set-up, plus tracking enhancements you can make to ensure you understand the most about your user experience.

Get the tracking fundamentals in place

Most of the time we look at Google Analytics, the basic pageview tracking is in place, marketing campaign tagging is reasonably accurate and ecommerce tracking is set-up. There are a few gotchas that it’s worth checking though:

• Avoid using a default GA integration within tools like Shopify or other ecommerce platforms AND a deployment via Google Tag Manager, or alternative tool. It’s pretty common to see duplicate tracking deployed by more than one method.

• Check that campaign tagging is consistently applied – both in terms of it always being there and in the naming convention used. Again, it’s very common that we see marketing team using utm_tagging in the right way conceptually, but practically individuals are allowed to have free licence over the format of the values they enter. A simple Excel or naming governance sheet can really help here, as can using the Custom Channels Grouping feature to group duplicate rows into one “channel”

• Also on Traffic Source reports – make sure you utilise Referral Exclusion Lists to avoid any self-referrals (where it looks like users have come to the site…from your site) or payment domains / providers

• Spot check your ecommerce data in your web analytics tool with your back-end. It should be no more than 15% out. If it is, deep-dive into the Transaction IDs you’re missing and look to understand any patterns. It’s reasonably common that the way people pay or a given browser version leads to missed sales and this is the first step in diagnosis. Additional tip, check how transaction IDs are assigned - some platforms will do this at Basket stage, not Confirmation.

• Make sure you create events, or modify events, as necessary to give you the insights you need. For example, we have a standard event on our website that fires when someone completes the form. We have a form for enquiries, one for careers and might create more in the future. From our marketing efforts though, we’re primarily focused on enquiry form completions, so we created a new event for it in the interface (as below):

Understand more about your website

From there, it’s critical to start thinking about both micro conversions – the actions users take on route to completing your main goal – and what you can learn about product demand and interest through web analytics.

With GA4 in particular, there’s a set of actions that Google will track by default, under the banner of Enhanced Measurement. Although we’d often recommend using the datalayer and GTM to track these actions rather than Enhanced Measurement, they do give you good coverage over the most common micro-conversions and actions of interest. Covered under this umbrella are things like:

• Scrolls
• Outbound clicks
• Video engagement
• Form completion
• File downloads

But don’t stop there! Cast a critical eye over what your user can do and ask yourself important questions like:

• Does it cost me money to add X to the website? If so, it makes sense to understand if users are even seeing this content!

• Do I want users to see content because I think it reassures them or drives conversion? If so, it makes sense to understand if users are even seeing this content too!

• Do users that interact with X convert at a higher rate? If so, it makes sense to try and get more users to see that content or use it!

The most common types of content that I see fitting into this area are:

• Interactions with product images – clicks, scrolling through a gallery, zooms. Why are you producing 10 photos per image if no one is clicking through them? Likewise, do videos do anything?

• Any tabbed, expandable, or accordion content. Maybe this contains useful information on USPs, delivery, or the product or service, or provides comfort around returns. You want people to see this right, let’s see that they do!

• Anything else on the PDP that helps us understand engagement. Do users click on links to reviews? Do they use the size guide? Or the wish list?



Understand more about your users - what they want and how you found them

But we can also use GA4 to understand more about your potential customers and the appetite they have for different products. It is through a combination of events and custom dimensions that we can build this understanding. For example:

• Any time a user has the choice to choose colours, size or other aspects about products either on a PDP or as part of a search result, this is a golden opportunity to learn what’s popular. It’s an extension of the usual insights you’d gain from your standard ecom and inventory reports but helpful none-the-less.

• If you offer a product or service, they will have attributes about them. For example in travel, properties have a range of amenities – if we understand that pet-friendly places are more viewed, more filtered for, and in demand than places with a playground, we’re learning. We are refining our understanding of our audience, it helps shape future strategy around properties and hotels to work with

• If you have a quiz or similar “product finder” tool, then this is GOLD for telling you more about types of users. Try to capture the responses to the quiz and build audiences to speak to more relevantly. Top tip – don’t underestimate the power of a simple Google (Bing/Chat GPT or preferred fact-finding tool) search. Often we find something that seems tricky or custom can be solved by using pre-canned integrations from the quiz provider.

• Finally here, my beloved audience triggers. These are like Audiences but on steroids. Create and audience that triggers an event. For example, for any retailer, you can use this to create a proxy for something like high-lifetime value. So create the audience with the revenue (or purchase frequency, or average order value, etc) that matches what you consider to be high-value. Likewise, fire a new event every time someone consumers a certain number of articles or views a sufficient amount of video. Every time these conditions are met, an event is triggered and you can use this like any other – i.e. to eventually see what channels are sending most high-value users!

Don’t stop with what happens online 

GA4, like it’s predecessor, has the capability to import data from other sources, and track interactions outside of the website. In every aspect of what we’ve covered so far, you can enhance your understanding about your marketing by adding more information:

• From a marketing perspective, you’re able to add cost data to allow for one-stop reporting in GA4, supporting ROI based insights. Useful if you’re using GA4 as the central source of reporting and invest heavily in non-Google media channels

• From an ecommerce perspective you can add data about items that you weren’t able to pass with the initial hit

• And from a customer perspective, if they’ve signed-in and you’re capturing User ID, you can add more information about their membership, previous purchases or similar attributes

You can also start to enhance your picture of what the user does by layering in insights around call tracking with tools like Infinity. 

If someone feels the need to pick up the phone, the likelihood is that they’re a high intent prospect and you want to do everything you can to make sure that caller, and future callers on the same path, convert to customers. In fact, call leads from PPC are 3x more likely to convert, so it’s key to get a full grasp of the journey they’ve been on and the search terms that motivated them to pick up the phone.

The more you know about your customers, what they’re searching for, and what they really want, means you can start to craft personalised journeys that set you apart from the competition. But the thing is, if you’re not tracking invaluable call data in GA4, you’re missing a massive part of the picture and you could very well be shooting in the dark. 



Everybody knows how tough competition is, and when the only thing setting you apart from your rivals is the experience you offer, you need to make sure you’re absolutely nailing it. 

Tracking call data in GA4 shines a light on what is working and sometimes – more importantly – what isn’t working. To optmise conversions and drive more revenue, advertisers need to make sure purchase journeys seamless, straightforward, and waste is eliminated from campaigns.

Tracking call data in GA4 enables you to lift the lid on how to deliver the best possible experience every time by and put the breaks on campaign activity that isn’t generating the right returns:

• Layering data gathered from online activity and behaviour to better understand the journeys customers take before picking up the phone

• Gaining intel on which search terms result in customers picking up the phone so you can better optimise budget-hungry PPC campaigns and generate better quality leads

• Getting a grip on common queries, concerns, and FAQs customers are calling about to see how you can fill gaps on your website, meaning customers can self-serve and agents can focus on converting calls

• Visualising acquisition, engagement, and monetisation by tracking the value of a call, time spent on a call, and other invaluable data points that shed a light on the true ROI of your marketing efforts

That’s before we get into the world of measurement protocol, a whole other delicious kettle of fish to explore another time.

Start with the end in mind

All of this is useful but the critical things are not to track for tracking’s sake, and not to let the process of tackling tracking perfection distract from the result you’re looking to drive.

If you want to squeeze more out of your website, then make sure you’re tracking the actions on the site that will allow you to answer the key questions you have.

If you want to understand more about your users, make sure you’re capturing the right insight to build up that picture.

You shouldn’t be tracking something which isn’t tied directly to a question.

Good luck, fare thee well and all that jazz. Remember, your trusty friends can always help you in a hook and a flash.