Have you been looking to calculate your digital marketing return on investment but are in a haze about how to track conversions in GA4?
All your digital marketing efforts, including SEO, content writing, and advertising, aim to get conversions and generate revenue.
Understandably, you want to measure these conversion events and get an estimate of your ROI.
Read along to find out what constitutes a conversion and how you can track conversions of interest in GA4.
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What is a Conversion Event in GA4?
An event is an interaction on your website or app, whereas a conversion event is when a user performs a desired action on your website or app.
For example, when a person loads a page on your website, clicks a link, or views an item, it is an event. These are measured to quantify the interaction of users with your website.
But when a user does something on your website or app that you want them to, e.g., subscribe to a paid event, sign up for a newsletter, or purchase a product or service, it is a conversion event.
We have four types of events in GA4;
- Automatically Collected – events that GA4 collects by default and ones you can find in your detailed reports.
- Enhanced Measurement – these events are collected when you enable enhanced measurement in GA4.
- Recommended – events with predefined names and parameters that GA4 starts collecting once you implement them.
- Custom – events important for your business that you define yourself. You need custom reports or explorations to analyze them.
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Learn about digital conversion rate optimization in this blog.
How to Set Up a Conversion Event in GA4?
A conversion is a special event.
To see conversion events in GA4, first, you need to create an event and mark it as a conversion before you can start seeing it.
Follow the step-by-step process below to create a conversion event in GA4.
Set up the Conversion Event in GA4
- Go to Google Analytics 4 > Admin > Property settings > Data display > Events.
- Click the Create event button on the right, then Create in the opening tab.
- Type in a name for the event in the Custom event name, for example, an event marking the visit to the thank you page after users download a checklist. Let us call it thankyou_page_visit.
- Enter your conditions in Matching conditions to define the event. For our example, in the Parameter section, we enter event_name, in the operator, select equals, and for Value, enter page_view.
- Click Add condition to add the second condition, parameter page_location, and choose the operator as contains, with the Value /thanks-you/.
- Next, go to Parameter configuration and click Add modification. Then, enter the parameter value and type a monetary value to define its value.
- Next, enter currency, add the currency type (e.g., USD), and click Create.
Mark the Event as a Conversion
You have successfully created a new event, but it will only be logged as an event when you mark it as one.
- Go to Google Analytics 4 > Admin > Property settings > Data display > Conversions.
- In the Conversion Events, click New conversion event, and type in the new event name.
- Then, slide the blue button to the right under Mark as conversion.
Verify the Conversion Event
A newly created event can take a few minutes to a couple of hours before it takes effect.
Once it does take effect, you can verify if the conversion event is working by going to GA4 > Reports > Realtime, then go to the Conversions by Event name.
If the new conversion event appears in the Conversions by Event name, your conversion event is working fine.
How to Track Conversion in GA4?
Conversion events help us understand our bottom-of-the-funnel traffic and, most importantly, revenue.
Here are a few ways to track conversion events in GA4.
Engagement Report
- Go to Google Analytics 4 > Reports > Engagement > Conversions, then scroll down to the table to see your conversion count and the revenue generated.
Acquisition Report
You can also view Conversions in the Acquisition report.
- Go to Google Analytics 4 > Reports > Acquisition > User acquisition.
- To find stats about a specific conversion event, for example, the conversion event you just created, you can select the event from the drop-down in the Conversions column of the table.
Advertising Report
- You can find detailed information about conversions in the conversion path. Go to Google Analytics 4 > Advertising > Attribution > Conversion paths.
Explorations
You can also create a custom exploration report to dig deeper into your conversion data.
- Go to Google Analytics 4 > Explore > Free form.
- Go to Dimensions in the Variables tab and Import the Session source / medium dimension.
- Next, go to Metrics in the same tab and click the plus icon to Import Sessions, Total users, Conversions, Session conversion rate, and Total revenue.
- Then drag and drop the dimension Session source/medium into the Rows section and add the Metrics to the Values section of the Settings tab.
- Congratulations, you have just created your Conversions report in Exploration.
- Rename it and return to review your conversion performance in one place.
Ecommerce Conversion Rate
The ecommerce conversion rate is something the older version of GA4 offered. Let us create another Exploration report to find this statistic.
- Go to Google Analytics 4 > Explore > Blank.
- Import the Event name and Session source/medium dimensions.
- Next, Import the Metrics Sessions, Session conversion rate, Total users, Ecommerce purchases, and Total revenue.
- Add Session source/ medium to the Rows and the Metrics to the Values.
- Let us now apply a Filter to add only the Purchase values and not for all the Conversions (you typically add a monetary value to non-financial conversions in GA4).
- Go to Filters, and add the dimension Event name. In the Conditions, set matches regex, and in Enter expression, type session_start|purchase, and click Apply.
- Tada! You have your new conversion report complete with the Ecommerce Conversion Rate.
Conclusion
A conversion in GA4 is the performance of a desirable action by a visitor on a website or app.
Google Analytics 4 collects a range of conversions automatically. However, businesses may want to enable recommended events or create custom events.
You can create a conversion event in GA4 by going to Admin and then to Data display.
Once created, you need to add the event to the list of conversion events and mark it as a conversion event.
Businesses can track conversion events in GA4 by going to the Engagement Report, User Acquisition Report, and Conversion Path Report.
Or create a custom Conversion Report in Explorations. You may even find the Ecommerce Conversion Rate via the Exploration report.
Rename and save them to return to find all the relevant conversion stats in one place.
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