Chances are you’ve heard of GA4. If not, you’ve definitely heard of Google Analytics. If still not, then you seriously must live under a boulder the size of Texas. For those who don’t know (all you in the back), GA4 (Google Analytics 4) is an online tool that helps you understand what people do when they visit your website—like what they click on, how long they look at something, or what pages they visit. It can track all sorts of different user actions (called events), giving you a clearer picture of your real web activity. Recently, GA4 has ushered in a new era of digital analytics, moving from traditional session-based models of Universal Analytics to more event-based models. This new event-based tracking system allows users a more nuanced and malleable approach to understanding user interactions.
The Evolution of Event Tracking
In the old Universal Analytics, tracking user interactions often required a rigid structure that sorted events into predefined hierarchies like Category, Action, and Label. This approach, while functional, lacked the flexibility to capture the true complexities of modern user behavior.
GA4 revolutionizes this by treating every user interaction as an event, whether it’s a page view, a button click, or a video play. This event-centric model allows for a more granular and comprehensive understanding of user engagement.
The Benefits of Custom Event Tracking
The shift to event-based tracking in GA4 brings several advantages, including enhanced flexibility, allowing marketers to define and track a wide array of user interactions without being confined to a strict structure. This versatility ensures that analytics align closely with specific business objectives and KPIs. By capturing detailed parameters for each event, such as the type of content viewed, GA4 provides richer context for user actions. This depth of data facilitates more informed decision-making.
Another key improvement is in mapping the customer journey. Understanding that specific sequence of user interactions allows you to better optimize the customer journey, enhancing user experience and conversion rates. For example, tracking views on a video can include parameters like title, duration, and engagement metrics, offering a comprehensive view of how the content was received.
Setting Up Custom Events and Conversions
Implementing custom events in GA4 is a straightforward process:
- Create a Custom Event: Navigate to Admin > Data display > Events, and click “Create event.” Define the event name and set your conditions that trigger it. To track form submissions, you might set conditions based on the “page_view” event and the “page_location” of your thank you page.
- Mark as a Key Event: Once your custom event is created (and is capturing data) simply enable the slider to the immediate right of the custom event and you’re on your way! Remember, only mark events as “key events” if they are the most important actions you want to track. Think file downloads, form submissions, purchases, applications, etc.
- Utilize Enhanced Measurement: GA4’s Enhanced Measurement feature automatically tracks common interactions like scrolls, outbound clicks, and video engagements without additional setup. This functionality provides immediate insights into user behavior with minimal configuration.
Key Takeaways
By leveraging these tools, marketers can tailor their analytics to capture the most relevant and impactful user interactions, aligning data collection with strategic goals.
As a manufacturer or service provider in the plastics or metals industry, you’re busy running an organization and making our world go round. If you need help setting up your Google Analytics Suite to properly capture data, reach out to Vive Marketing for assistance — The Original Marketing Agency for Manufacturers.
