Google Analytics can provide deep insights about the conversion habits of your customers, including what pages they visit before they convert and what channels attract the best leads.
But later this year, the way you analyze conversions in Google Analytics will look a bit different as Google rolls out GA4, the new and improved version of their data monitoring platform.
If you want to take a deep dive into what’s changing with GA4, then check out our full walkthrough here: Guide to Google Analytics 4. In this article, we home in on conversions, including how they’re changing and best practices for making sure you’re getting the most detailed insights on your converting customers.
What are conversions in GA4?
Conversions in GA4 are specific events (or actions) your website visitors take that either earn your company money or else positively impact your business in some way. These might include:
- Purchasing a product
- Booking a service
- Making a phone call to your company
- Signing up for your mailing list
- Requesting a quote
- Filling out a form on your site
Similar to the current version of Google Analytics, you’ll be able to define specific events that you want to count as a conversion — and GA4 will also automatically count some actions as conversions once you’ve set it up.
The Difference between UA and GA4 with Conversion Tracking
If you’ve been using Universal Analytics (UA) to track conversions, then you’re likely familiar with the term “goal.” In UA, goals are the actions you define as conversions, and historically, the limitations around what can and cannot be tracked as a goal have been one of the pain points for Google Analytics users.
GA4 sets out to address that pain point with the introduction of Events, which are the most significant difference between UA and GA4. Events, which in many ways replace what are now referred to as sessions, are actions users take on your website. Events in GA4 are much more specific than what you can see in UA, and give you deeper insights into how customers behave on your site.
To fully grasp how conversions work in GA4, it’s vital you have an understanding of Events in the platform. Check out our full guide on GA4 Events to explore that topic in depth.
How to Track Phone Calls as Conversions
For many businesses, incoming phone calls are the most important conversion events. Historically, it’s been challenging to connect the dots between online visitors and phone callers, even though many people will browse a company’s website before picking up the telephone.
Fortunately, for CallRail users, tracking phone calls as conversions in Google Analytics is quite simple, thanks to the seamless GA4 CallRail integration. The first step is to make sure you’ve set up GA4 correctly, and then create custom dimensions to mark phone calls as unique events.
If that sounds complicated, don’t worry — we have an easy step-by-step guide to setting up the GA4 Analytics integration right here.
How to Configure Conversion Tracking in GA4
In addition to setting up phone calls as conversion events, you’ll likely want to mark other actions as conversions as well.
To do this, you can either denote existing Events as conversions, or you can create new, custom Event parameters to capture the data and tag it as a conversion in GA4.
Set Existing Events as Conversions
If you find that GA4 is already tracking your conversion events, it’s quite simple to direct the platform to mark these as conversions. Visit your settings panel by selecting the gear in the lower left of your GA dashboard. Then, under the Property Column, select Events.
From there, you’ll see a list of existing Events, and you can simply slide the toggle under the “Mark as conversion” column to start counting certain Events as conversions.
Create New Events and Mark Them as Conversions
If you have an Event you want to mark as a conversion, and you don’t see it in the list of existing Events, then you’ll need to first create that Event and then set it to be counted as a conversion.
To do this, visit the same area in your Admin console (select Events under the property column), and then hit the button marked “Create Event.” From there, you’ll need to name your event and fill out parameters and conditions for the event. For example, you might create a “Form_Submission” condition to track any time someone visits a Thank You page after filling out a form on your site.
Once this is done, you’ll be able to follow the same instructions as we’ve written out above for marking an existing Event as a conversion. Go to the Properties column in your Admin settings, select Event, find the Event you’ve just created, and slide the toggle under the “Mark as conversion” column.
Finally, you can then set up the same custom event in Google Tag Manager. Google outlines how to do that in this article.
Attribution Modeling in GA4
Being able to see the number of conversions coming into your website is useful, but with GA4, you can go a step further and attribute specific marketing channels or actions as the primary trigger for the conversion.
There are several different attribution models you can use in GA4. Here’s a breakdown of what each one means:
Last Touch
Conversely, you can attribute conversions to the “last touch,” or the last action a user takes before converting. For example, this might attribute the last landing page they visited before making the call as the primary trigger of the conversion, or attribute a specific ad they clicked before filling out a form as the conversion cause.
Data Driven
Finally, you can use GA4’s cutting-edge machine learning technology to distribute credit for a conversion to multiple touchpoints along a customer’s journey.
The platform can analyze both converting and non-converting paths along the journey over time, and then attribute conversions to those pathways that were most likely to cause a customer to convert. You can turn on this feature in the Advertising section of your Google Analytics admin console.
With GA4, business owners will be able to get a better picture of how and why conversions are happening on their website. Combined with the call tracking power of CallRail, GA4 signals a game-changing new era in business intelligence.
Integrate GA4 with CallRail to drive more conversions today
If you want more granular data on your converting customers that will help you improve your ROI, then sign up for a CallRail free trial and set up the GA4 integration today.
