Google Analytics Conversion Tracking: How-To Guide

The words “analytics” and “data” often cause people’s eyes to glaze over in confusion. Too many believe that only math gurus understand data. The reality is that analytics is simply the act of putting meaning behind the numbers. The number 100 means nothing without definition and context. Adding that context is where analytics becomes essential in growing and managing your business.

If you have a website, then you should be using Google Analytics to see how users are behaving when they visit. Google Analytics gives you valuable insight that can help you provide information that your current and potential customers are interested in and are searching. Beyond having access to data like session visits, bounce rate, and which pages people are visiting, Google Analytics can also provide you excellent data on conversions. If you are unsure how to track your conversion data in Google Analytics, this guide is for you. The steps below are for Google Analytics 4 (GA4), because the older Universal Analytics, with its Goals, Views and Tracking IDs, stopped processing data on July 1, 2023.

How do you set up Google Analytics 4 on your website?

You create a Google Analytics account and property, add a web data stream for your site, then add the Google tag, which carries your measurement ID (it starts with G-), to every page.

If you do not have a Google Analytics account, you must first create one. If you already have a Google account like a Gmail email address or YouTube account, then you will find it easiest to establish your Google Analytics account under this same account. If you do not have a Google account, follow these steps to create one.

1. Visit Google.com and in the upper right corner, select Account.
2. Choose Create an Account and then select your account type, for myself or to manage a business. You’ll want to select to manage a business due to the features you will have access to for business personalization and business visibility. You do not need to use a Gmail account for your Google account. If you want to use a business email or other email address, Google allows this.
3. Google will ask for some personal information and allow you to choose a username and password. It is optional to provide a phone number for future ease in accessing your account should you forget your password.
4. Confirm your information and you are set with your Google account.

Now that you have your Google account, it is time to set up your Google Analytics account and get your Google tag.

1. When you are signed into your Google account, go to analytics.google.com.
2. Create an account, then create a property by giving it a name and choosing your time zone, currency, industry, and business size.
3. Choose Web as your platform and enter your website URL and a stream name to create a data stream. Leave enhanced measurement on so Google Analytics tracks page views and some actions, like file downloads, automatically.
4. It is best to check the boxes next to all of the recommended options so you are maintaining the best practices of Google Analytics and getting the most from the platform.
5. Accept the Terms of Service. Google then shows you the Google tag for your site, which includes your measurement ID. The screenshot below shows the older Universal Analytics screen, which looked different.

(Image Credit: MailOptin)

Your Google Analytics account is now set up, but you are not finished. You must complete some very important steps to apply your analytics conversion tracking code to collect information and data that will feed into your Google Analytics account.

1. You will need your measurement ID and Google tag code snippet. To find them, go to Admin > Data collection and modification > Data streams, open the Web tab, and click your web stream. Many people freeze when they see the code snippet. Do not worry. Take a deep breath and move forward.
2. If you are using a WordPress site, it is easiest to activate Google Analytics through the MonsterInsights plugin, which also is free unless you choose to upgrade to the paid version.
3. To use the free version, go to Plugins from your WordPress menu and choose Add New. Search for MonsterInsights and click Install and then Activate.
4. Next, go to Insights > Settings and select Authenticate with your Google account.
5. Choose your Google account and then allow MonsterInsights to manage and publish your Google Tag Manager content/folder.
6. After you have selected the correct Google Analytics property, click Complete Authentication.

(Image Credit: MonsterInsights)

You also can add Google Analytics code without the use of plugins. You can add the code to the header.php file in your WordPress theme or if you know PHP, you can open your theme’s functions.php file and add the code snippet between the following code:

<?php add_action (‘wp_footer’, ‘add_googleanalytics’); function add_googleanalytics() { ?>

Add Google Analytics code snippet here.

<?php } ?>

You now have three options for adding the Google Analytics code to a WordPress website. If you do not use WordPress, check your website builder first: Google lists built-in Google Analytics integrations for builders such as Shopify, Squarespace, Wix, and GoDaddy, where you usually just paste in your measurement ID. If you are still feeling uneasy about this step, have a developer add your Google tag to your website. Google says data collection may take up to 30 minutes to begin after the tag is added.

What should you decide before you track conversions?

Decide on your business goal and the one action on your website, like a form fill or a purchase, that shows progress toward it.

Before you set up conversions, you need to identify your goals and key performance indicators (KPIs). You write your goals and KPIs down in a measurement plan, which simply states what your goals and KPIs are and how you are evaluating success. For example, let’s say that your goal is to increase newsletter subscribers so you can connect with your website visitors more often. Your goal is “Increase newsletter subscribers.” Your KPI to measure your progress toward accomplishing the goal is form completions where website visitors provide their email address. Once you identify your KPIs, you can move on to setting up conversions.

How do you set up conversions in GA4?

In GA4, conversions are called key events, and you set one up by going to Admin, opening Events, and clicking the star next to the event you care about, or by creating a new event and turning on Mark as key event.

If you stop at the basic out-of-the-box Google Analytics, you will gather important information on sessions, how much time people are spending online, and what pages they are visiting. What you will not know is which of those visits turned into the form fills or purchases that matter to your business. If you are running paid search, you will not know which campaigns led to leads or sales.

Start by deciding which actions count as key events. Your measurement plan comes in here, so the key events you set up match how you measure the success of your website. Let’s use the example from above for newsletter subscribers.

GA4 has no Views or Goals. Instead, in Admin, under Data display, click Events, then Create event. Give the new event a name you will understand when you look at your data, such as newsletter_signup. The screenshot below shows the old Universal Analytics goal screen for comparison:

(Image Credit: Search Engine Journal)

When a person provides an email address to opt in for your newsletter, a thank you page should appear. A visit to the thank you page is your signal that someone signed up. So, create the new event without code: choose page_view as the event it is based on and enter the URL of your thank you page. Turn on Mark as key event. The default key event value is optional, but if you know the lifetime value of a person who opts in for your newsletter, you can enter a value. Be sure to click Create. Do not edit the page_view event itself, or it will stop counting views of your other pages.

If your website already sends an event for the action, such as the form_submit event from enhanced measurement, you can skip creating a new one and just click the star next to that event in the Events list. Google says standard GA4 properties can have up to 30 key events. You can unmark a key event any time your measurement plan changes, and the change applies from that point on, so your past data stays as it was. Standard reports can take up to 24 hours to show a change. Here is the old Universal Analytics goals list for comparison:

(Image Credit: Bounteous)

Where do you see your conversion data in GA4?

You see conversion data in the Traffic acquisition report, found under Reports, then Acquisition, then Traffic acquisition, which shows your key events for each traffic channel.

To look at your conversions, you will want to look at the acquisition reports in Google Analytics. Go to Reports > Acquisition > Traffic acquisition and pick the newsletter_signup key event you just set up in the key events column. The Traffic acquisition report shows sessions and key events for each channel. You will see which channels are driving the highest volume of visits as well as the highest conversion rate. If you provided a value for your key event, you also will see what your conversions have been worth and which channels contributed the most value. Here is an example of the older Universal Analytics conversion overview, which GA4 replaced with the Traffic acquisition report:

(Image Credit: Hotjar)

How do you link Google Ads to Google Analytics?

In Google Analytics, go to Admin, then Product links, then Google Ads links, click Link, choose your Google Ads account, and submit.

Google Ads, formerly AdWords, lets you create conversions from your Google Analytics key events, so your paid search campaigns can bid toward the actions you care about. To link your Google Ads account to your Google Analytics account, you need Editor access in Google Analytics and Admin access in Google Ads. Then take the following steps:

1. First, go to the Admin section of your Google Analytics account.
2. Under Product links, click Google Ads links, then click Link.
3. Click Choose Google Ads accounts, select the accounts you want to link, and click Confirm, then Next.
4. Leave Enable Personalized Advertising on or turn it off, and choose whether to turn on auto-tagging, which adds tracking details to your ad links for you.
5. Click Next and review your settings.
6. Click Submit to link your accounts.

How do you track downloads, video views and form fills?

GA4’s enhanced measurement tracks file downloads, video views, and form interactions automatically, and you can add custom events through Google Tag Manager (GTM) for anything else.

You likely will want data on things like PDF downloads, video views, online tool use, and form submissions. Enhanced measurement covers several of these with events such as file_download, video_start, and form_submit. For anything else, you can add custom event tagging. Event tagging can be hard coded, but Google Tag Manager is usually easier, because GTM lets you add or change event tagging without editing your website’s code each time.

The old Universal Analytics used a Category, Action, and Label for each event. In GA4, every event has a name plus parameters, which are extra details sent with the event. For example, let’s look at newsletter opt-ins. Perhaps the newsletter opt-in is a form on your website, but you may also have a Contact Us form that is used to request more information. Your custom event tagging would look something like the following:

Event name = form_submission

Parameter form_name = Newsletter

Parameter form_location = Footer

For the Contact Us form, you would change form_name to Contact Us.

The use of custom event tagging allows you to more thoroughly tag your website to see how users are behaving on your site and to gather important information around conversion activity. Any custom event can also be marked as a key event, as described above, so it counts as a conversion.

What are UTM parameters and why do they matter for conversions?

Urchin Tracking Module (UTM) parameters are short tags added to the end of a link that tell Google Analytics which source, medium, and campaign sent a visitor, so you can see which marketing led to each conversion.

We’ve covered how to set up Google Analytics on your website and create key events. Let’s talk about the importance of UTM parameters as part of Google Analytics and how to track conversions. UTM parameters allow Google Analytics to attribute website visitors and their actions, including conversions, to a traffic source. Without the use of UTM parameters it can be impossible to attribute a traffic source to marketing efforts, and thus know the return on ad spend (ROAS).

Google Analytics recognizes traffic using specific logic involving the HTTP referrer and the UTM parameters. HTTP Referrer means a user clicked on a link on another website and was directed to your website. The link may come from places like a Search Engine Results Page (SERP) from a search engine, a blog, or a social media page.

UTM parameters are appended text at the end of a URL that identify the source, medium, campaign, term, and content of marketing campaigns. UTM parameters are added like this: https://www.website.com/?utm_source=XXX&utm_medium=XXX&utm_campaign=XXX&utm_term=xxx&utm_content=XXX. Google says that whenever you use UTM parameters, you must include utm_source, utm_medium, and utm_campaign. By including all of these parameters, you will be able to identify information like the channel the user came from, the campaign that drove the user, important information like A/B testing or specific calls to action that prompted the user to click a link.

Below is some of the logic Google Analytics uses in its default channel group to categorize traffic by medium:

• utm_medium=email: identifies traffic from email
• utm_medium=affiliate: identifies affiliate marketing
• utm_medium=social: identifies organic (unpaid) social media traffic
• utm_medium=display and utm_medium=cpm: identifies banner and display advertising
• utm_medium=cpc, utm_medium=ppc, and utm_medium=paidsearch: identifies paid search when the source is a search engine, or paid social when the source is a social site

There are times when a source can fall into more than one medium, which is why Google Analytics uses both the medium and source to categorize traffic. For example, traffic from Google can be from paid search, organic search, display, or referral. Google Analytics will see the visit came from Google and will then look for utm_medium to further identify the attribution. Without utm_medium on your ad links, your paid campaigns can be categorized as organic search and you will not know your ROAS. Linking Google Ads and turning on auto-tagging handles the tagging for your Google Ads clicks for you.

Social is another channel that can have paid and organic traffic. If you have purchased advertising on Facebook, you will want to make sure to use a UTM parameter that distinguishes this advertising from a post that you have made on your Facebook page or both will come through the reporting in the same manner as simply social traffic. In the absence of both a referrer and a UTM parameter, Google Analytics will categorize the traffic as “Direct,” which typically means the user typed in the URL or clicked on a bookmark or Google Analytics simply does not know where the user came from. The image below shows traffic tracking with an emphasis on Direct and Social traffic:

There are some rules around UTM parameters:

• UTM values are case sensitive, so Google recommends using lower case. If you use email, Email, eMail, or EMAIL for the links in an email campaign, each version shows up as a separate medium in your Google Analytics reports.
• Do not include spaces or your URL will break and you will lose everything in your UTM parameter after the space. Always use an underscore instead of a space.
• Do not use punctuation or special characters as they also will break the URL.
• Never reuse the same UTM parameter sequence or you will be unable to distinguish one initiative from another.

Google Analytics allows you to create custom channel groups to more thoroughly categorize your users and attribute conversions. You may want to create custom channels to identify efforts like online newsletters, QR codes, or to more clearly categorize sponsored social from organic social traffic. Through consistent use of UTM parameters, you will be able to clearly see how your marketing efforts are paying off in driving traffic to your site as well as engagement with your KPIs and key events.

How can diib help you get more from your Google Analytics data?

diib connects to your Google Analytics account and turns your traffic data into plain-English insights and recommendations in one dashboard, alongside your keyword rankings, site health, and backlinks.

Google Analytics is a powerful tool in helping you see and understand where your marketing dollars are getting the greatest return on investment. While the out-of-the-box Google Analytics implementation provides valuable information, it is limited when it comes to attributing conversions. For more detailed reporting, set up key events, custom event tagging, UTM parameters, and a linked Google Ads account.

diib also shows your latest Google Analytics metrics alongside the rest of your website data, so you can see what to adjust to make the most of your resources. Here are some of the features we know you’ll love:

• Google Analytics integration
• Bounce rate monitoring
• Facebook and Instagram Insights, like post clicks and page visits, plus YouTube video performance
• Broken pages where you have backlinks (404 checker)
• Keyword, backlink, and indexing monitoring and tracking tools
• Core Web Vitals monitoring
• Technical SEO monitoring

Click here for your free 60-second site scan. diib members also get diibLive office hours with our growth experts.