Google Analytics 4 (GA4) and Google Tag Manager (GTM) are both free tools which, when allied to your small business website, give you all the key metrics you need to see and understand how SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) and PPC (Pay Per Click) campaigns are working.
You can discover valuable insights into how your campaigns are increasing website traffic, impacting user engagement, raising your search engine rankings, and all the other positive results you need in order to gain a healthy return on your investment.
Make Data-Driven Decisions for your Business
Leveraging GA4 and GTM to effectively track your marketing efforts means you can make data-driven decisions to refine your message and your reach, hone your ability to connect with and influence your target audience, and optimise your ad spend.
Here are some of the main metrics that you can use to help you assess how effective your digital marketing is:
Conversion Rate
This metric measures how often users click through to a landing page and then complete the end goal – for example, making a purchase, or signing up for a newsletter. GA4 will give you this figure, but not by default. You need to add the metric to your report. Customise a standard report by:
- Opening your GA account
- Navigating to Reports > Acquisition > Traffic acquisition
- Click the pencil icon in the top right corner
- Click Metrics > Add Metrics
- Search for and select the Session conversion rate metric
- Click Apply and Save > Save changes to current report > Save
Higher conversion rates generally lead to higher campaign profits.
Event Tracking
A website event is a user interaction – like clicking a link, downloading a brochure or submitting a form. Some event data is automatically collected by default on GA4, but you can implement enhanced or customised events as key events via GTM, which will surface in your Google Analytic reports.
Follow the link to where Google explains how to set up GA events in Tag Manager.
Click-through rate (CTR)
The CTR is the number of clicks that a web page, advert or call-to-action receives divided by the number of times the advert has been shown. This is a valuable metric that tells you what works with your campaign. For example, a low CTR could mean you’re targeting the wrong audience, or not delivering the right message to convince them to click through. A high CTR indicates users find your links relevant and engaging.
To find your click-through rate (CTR) in GA4, follow these steps:
- Log in to your Google Analytics account and navigate to the property you want to analyse.
- Click on "Reports" in the left-hand menu.
- Locate the "Engagement" tab and click on it.
- Under "Engagement," click on the "Pages and screens" report.
- The "Pages and screens" report will display a table with various metrics. Look for the "CTR" column, which gives the click-through rate for each page.
Bounce Rate
This metric is the percentage of website visitors who leave the site after viewing only one page – in other words, they aren’t interested in engaging any further. The bounce rate can help identify usability or content issues, indicating that visitors are not able to find what they’re looking for, or are dissatisfied with what they find on the website.
Find your bounce rate on GA4 by signing in, then:
- Select Reports from the left menu.
- Go to the report you want to customise.
- Click Customise report in the upper-right corner.
- Click Metrics in Report data.
- Click Add metric near the bottom of the right menu.
- Type "Bounce rate".
- Click Apply.
- Save the changes to the report.
We’ve barely touched the tip of the iceberg when it comes to all the valuable insights you can obtain to drive the growth of your business from paying attention to GA4 and GTM metrics and data streams.
Analytics is a fascinating field that not only monitors performance in the past and present, but can also be used to predict outcomes for the future as you strive towards your goals.
If you’d like some professional help with using GA4 and GTM to measure the success of your digital marketing – and perhaps invest in giving your SEO or PPC a boost – get in touch with the specialists at Dentons Digital. Call us on 01373 482774.
