Universal Analytics is gone. GA4 is the reality — and for most businesses, it is a reality they have not fully dealt with. In our experience auditing over 60 GA4 installs in 2024, the majority are missing critical events, have duplicate tracking inflating session counts, and are making decisions on data they do not realise is broken.
The Core Configuration Checklist
1. Enhanced measurement enabled (scroll depth, outbound clicks, site search, video engagement, file downloads). 2. Custom events for key business actions: form submissions by form ID, phone number clicks, CTA button clicks, specific page views (pricing, contact, service pages), and chat initiations. 3. Conversions marked: at minimum, one form submission event and one phone click event should be marked as conversions. 4. Google Ads linked and auto-tagging enabled. 4. Search Console linked for organic keyword data. 5. Internal IP filters applied (your office IP should not inflate session counts).
The Events Most Businesses Are Missing
Form submission tracking is the most commonly broken configuration. GA4's enhanced measurement tracks form interactions but not actual submissions — you need a separate event triggered on form success or on the thank-you page load. Without this, you are either not measuring leads at all, or measuring form engagements (which includes abandoned forms) as if they were conversions.
The Reports That Drive Real Decisions
Build these custom explorations in GA4: (1) Traffic > Conversions by channel and landing page — shows you which sources drive qualified traffic vs. just volume. (2) User journey funnel — homepage to contact page to thank you, with dropout rates at each step. (3) Content performance — top landing pages ranked by conversion rate, not just sessions. Most of the default GA4 reports are built for product managers, not performance marketers. The exploration tool is where the real insights live.
