“In a marketing analytics worldview, companies must have an accounting of and insight into all of their marketing programs in all of their channels, including web/browser, mobile apps, TV/video, social, paid media, field, print, outdoor and others. If your organization is still stuck in the web analytics mindset, it is time to reinvent your analytics practice, leveraging all of the available marketing analytics tools to make faster and better decisions and drive your business.” – Jeff Allen, Sr. Director of Product Marketing for Adobe Analytics.

As a business, it is your responsibility to understand where your website traffic is coming from and how visitors interact with your site. If you do not know how to read and respond to these metrics, it becomes difficult to make informed marketing decisions or identify where opportunities are being missed.

Before modern technology, data experts pulled this information for brands and explained what it meant. As technology has advanced, new ways of gaining insights have come to light, giving businesses access to data that was once much harder to collect and interpret.

These handy tools help companies track, monitor, and improve their websites. There are many platforms you can choose from, including Google Analytics, StatCounter, Kissmetrics, and more. Each tool has specific features, specialties, and upgrades that can cater to different business needs.

Analytics software ranges in price, and some platforms require paid subscriptions or additional upgrades. However, you do not need to spend money to start collecting valuable website data. Instead, you can begin with a free analytics tool from Google: Google Analytics 4, commonly known as GA4.

What is Google Analytics (GA4)?

According to W3Techs Google Analytics is one of the most widely used website analytics tools. So, what is it exactly? Google Analytics is a free analytics tool that gathers data for your business to make better decisions. The information that it collects is not just about your website but your visitors as well. 

Google Analytics tracks metrics like your overall amount of website traffic, the websites your traffic came from, traffic from individual pages, amount of converted leads, where your leads came from, visitor demographics and whether your visitor came from a desktop or mobile device.

The best thing about Google Analytics is that any person who owns a website can use it. So, whether you are a small blogger or an apparel eCommerce business, use this tool to improve your site. Here is how you set it up.

Step 1: Create a Google Analytics 4 Account

To begin, create your Google Analytics account. Go to Google Analytics and follow the setup instructions, including your account name, property details, business information and data-sharing preferences.

In GA4, you will create a property for your website. You will also create a web data stream, which tells Google Analytics where your website data is coming from.

Once this is created, GA4 will provide a Measurement ID. Your Measurement ID is unique to your GA4 web data stream and usually begins with “G-” followed by a series of letters and numbers.

Step 2: Set Up Google Tag Manager

Did you know that some tools can work together to enhance your website? One of these tools is Google Tag Manager. It is another free tool from Google that manages tags and helps send website data to platforms like Google Analytics 4.

Google Tag Manager also allows you to easily add and update tags without manually entering code every time. This makes it easier to manage tracking as your website and marketing needs grow.

First, head over to Google Tag Manager and go through the steps to create an account. Once you enter your account information, add a container. A container holds the tags, triggers and variables used on your website.

Give your container a descriptive name and select where it will be used, such as Web, iOS, Android or Server. For most business websites, you will choose Web. Once you finish the container, click create and then review and agree to the Terms of Service.

After that, you will get the container’s installation code snippets. These snippets need to be added to your website, usually with one code placed in the header and the other placed after the opening body tag. If you are not comfortable editing your website code, your website developer or marketing team can help with this step.

Step 3: Set Up GA4 With Google Tag Manager

The next step after setting up your GA4 account and Google Tag Manager is to connect them. Go to the Google Tag Manager dashboard and select the option to add a new tag.

From there, create a tag for your website. In the tag configuration area, choose the Google tag option and enter your GA4 Measurement ID. Doing this allows your website’s data to go straight to Google Analytics 4.

After you finish the tag configuration, move onto the triggering section. Select All Pages so the Google tag loads across your entire website. Once you complete that, click Save and publish the changes in Google Tag Manager.

After publishing, you should test the setup to make sure data is being collected correctly. GA4’s real-time reporting and Google Tag Assistant can help confirm whether your tag is firing properly.  

Step 4: Set Your Key Events

While you may have a great picture of what you want this tool to do for you, Google Analytics does not automatically know which actions matter most to your business. That is why you have to set up key events.

In the older version of Google Analytics, these important actions were often called goals. In Google Analytics 4, they are now handled as events and key events. A key event is an action that matters to your business, such as a form submission, phone click, appointment request, purchase, quote request or newsletter signup.

Some basic events may be collected automatically through enhanced measurement, depending on your setup. For more specific actions, you may need to create custom events using Google Tag Manager. Once those events are collecting properly, you can mark the most important ones as key events inside GA4.

This step is important because traffic alone does not tell the full story. A website can get visits without generating leads, so your analytics setup should help you understand which actions are actually supporting business growth.

Step 5: Link to Google Search Console

Another tool that you cannot go without is Google Search Console. It is another free yet powerful extension that can help you understand how your website appears in organic search.

Google Search Console can show you search queries, impressions, clicks, indexing issues and other details related to your website’s presence in Google Search. When paired with GA4, it can give you a clearer view of how people find your site and what they do after they arrive.

To connect Search Console with GA4, go into your GA4 Admin settings and look for Product Links. From there, choose Search Console Links and follow the steps to connect the correct Search Console property with your GA4 property.

You will need the proper permissions in both Google Analytics and Google Search Console to complete this connection. Once linked, Search Console data can help you better understand which search terms and pages are contributing to your organic visibility.

Step 6: Customize the Account to Match Your Needs

After setting up Google Search Console, customize Google Analytics 4 to what you need. First do the basic information like granting access to your team members, confirming your website data stream and linking your current Google Ads account if you use paid campaigns.

A step you do not want to forget is reviewing your events and key events. For example, a restaurant may care about menu views, reservation clicks and direction requests, while a service business may care about form submissions, phone clicks and quote requests.

Another step you do not want to skip is internal traffic filtering. Your own team may visit the website often, and those visits can affect your reporting. GA4 allows you to define and filter internal traffic so your reports better reflect real customer behavior.

You may also want to review enhanced measurement settings. Depending on your website, GA4 can automatically track actions such as page views, scrolls, outbound clicks, site search, video engagement and file downloads. These settings should be reviewed to make sure they match what your business actually needs to measure.

Do you want your visitors to find things fast on your website? Then site search tracking may be useful in Google Analytics. In GA4, site search can often be tracked through enhanced measurement, but it may need to be adjusted based on how your website search function is built.

There are many more customizations that you can make on your Google Analytics 4 account. All you need to do is review what matters most to your website and your business goals. You can also watch videos or take courses that Google offers for free on how to work through the features in Google Analytics.

Google Analytics 4 is a powerful tool that helps your website tremendously. However, it can also be confusing and tedious to grasp. Just because you do not understand the ins and outs does not mean you have to give up on it.

Instead, work with a knowledgeable marketing team that understands all aspects of Google Analytics 4. Contact us today to set up a Google Analytics audit.