Google Analytics

Shopify GA4 Conversion Tracking: The Ultimate Guide

Advantages of conversion rates & tracking in GA4

In GA4, you can mark certain events as conversions. This data can be used to gain a deeper understanding of your users and improve the efficiency of your organization.

According to Google, conversions are events that contribute to a business's success. For instance, if you have an e-commerce site, you will most likely be trying to get people to make a purchase in order to boost your sales. On the other hand, if you have a marketing site, you might be using it to generate leads. These actions can also be beneficial for your business.

Unfortunately, it can be hard to identify success with publishing or editorial sites, as their revenue mainly comes from advertising. For instance, if your goal is to build an audience through site registrations or newsletter signups, these can be conversions.

There are no established standards when it comes to identifying successful events in your business. Instead, it's up to you to determine what actions contribute to your company's success.

Why is Conversion Tracking Needed in Digital Marketing?

One of the most critical factors that you should consider when it comes to digital marketing is conversion tracking. This tool will allow you to monitor the effectiveness of your campaigns and identify areas where you can improve.

Conversion tracking lets you identify areas where your efforts could be improved. It will allow you to analyze the data and determine which marketing channels and keywords are performing well, giving you the necessary insight to allocate your resources properly and optimize your campaigns.

With conversion tracking, you'll be able to make educated decisions regarding your marketing efforts. You won't be relying on guesswork or assumptions, and you'll be able to utilize data to develop effective strategies. It helps you reduce risks and maximize your ROI by focusing more on tactics that have been proven to work.

One of the main advantages of conversion tracking is its ability to provide insight into the actions of users before and after a conversion. This allows you to formulate offers and messages that will resonate with your intended audience.

Conversion tracking also allows you to measure and make educated decisions regarding the effectiveness of your efforts, so it can help you improve the efficiency of your campaigns and allocate your resources more effectively.

Toggling Events as Conversions

You can view your conversions in the Google Analytics 4 interface's main page. To do so, go to the "Conversions" section, and then click on the "Configure" button. If you're using a data stream, the purchase event will be the only event that's marked as a conversion.

To mark a particular event as a conversion, you can go to the Events page and look for the events that have been collected on your site. This will show you how many have been counted since the start of the project.

Apart from the events that your CMS or platform is handling, you can also see the other events that it is sending. For instance, if an inquiry is submitted, the "chat-opened" and "generate_lead" events can be sent by a widget on Wix for example. Image Courtesy of PR Newswire.

Other platforms, such as third-party add-ons and plugins, can additionally send events. Having a system that automatically triggers events is useful for eCommerce, as it can be a bit complicated to set up.

To add a new conversion to the list, go to the Conversions section and click on the "Add New" button. This will take you to the next step.

Attribution Model

Before a user can convert, they have to first visit your website. For instance, if they come from a paid search ad, they might go back through organic search before eventually converting. They might also visit again through an email newsletter link.

The Model Comparison report by GA4 provides a simple way to compare the impact of various attribution models on a website's revenue and conversion. It shows you how those models would affect a user's conversion.

There are two main attribution models that you can choose from: the Linear model and the Last click model. The former gives credit to every touchpoint on the path, while the latter provides credit to the last one. If you want to maintain the same data, you can opt for the latter.

Choosing the right model for your conversion data is more than just an exercise in choosing a model. It's also important to consider the various factors that influence a user's journey and how they can ultimately convert. For instance, if you want to focus on those channels that help users find your website, then choose the right model.

Other Uses for Conversions in GA4

Explorations

If you're planning on building your own reports, or "explorations" as they are called by GA4, then you can add related dimensions and metrics to them. In July 2022, a feature known as conversion rate metrics was added to Universal Analytics. This was a long-awaited addition.

These new metrics can be used in your custom reports to show the percentage of individuals who initiated a conversion event and the number of sessions in which this occurred.

Google Ads

When you're a user of Google Ads, you can easily link your GA4 properties to your account and then import the data for your conversions. This allows you to see which campaigns are converting the most. Image Courtesy of the Digital Marketing Institute.

In addition, you can use this data to improve your bids and increase the efficiency of your campaigns. This method is similar to how you can import your UA objectives into Google Ads. If you previously did this, make sure that you start using GA4 conversions instead.

Differences between Google Ads and GA4 conversion tracking

The main focus of Google Ads conversion tracking is on tracking the conversions within the platform's ecosystem. On the other hand, GA4 tracking goes beyond the platform and provides a more complete view of a user's behavior by tracking conversions across various outlets.

Google Ads provides a robust reporting system that is user-friendly. But, with the help of GA4, you can get deeper into your users' behavior and find out more valuable data.

Google Ads conversion tracking is easy to use, making it an ideal choice for marketers of varying skill levels. But, with the advanced features of GA4, it may require more expertise to effectively utilize.

Audiences

One of the most useful features of GA4 is the ability to build audiences that are based on the types of users that your business has. This allows you to identify which users are most important to your business and which ones have triggered conversions.

One of the features that GA4 offers is the ability to create predictive audiences, which are based on the likelihood that a user will make a purchase in the next couple of days. However, only those sites that meet a certain minimum traffic threshold will be able to use this feature.

These audiences can be used in various ways. One of these is to analyze them and see what sets them apart from your overall users. For instance, they might be more likely to come to your site from a certain country. This could be useful in marketing.

If you have linked GA4 to Google Ads, then you can use your audiences there. This feature allows you to target your users based on their previous actions. In addition, you can experiment with Google Optimize and see if your audience is more likely to convert after visiting a different page.

Measuring Conversion Rates

One of the ways to measure the conversion rate in GA4 is through session conversion rate, which is the number of sessions with a conversion event divided by the total number of sessions multiplied by 100.

User conversion rate on the other hand is calculated by the number of users who triggered the conversion event divided by the total number of users multiplied by 100. 

Tracking Conversion Rates

A conversion rate of 2% to 5% is considered to be a good rate, while the average conversion rate lies at 2.35%. The top 10% pull in over 11%, while the rest get around 5%.

Bounce Rate

A bounce rate is a measure of how often people visit your app or website. It can help you identify areas of concern that could lead to a customer's failure to become a part of your business. Some of the most common factors that could cause a visitor to leave are poor content, slow loading times, and broken links.

In Google Analytics, bounce rate is one of the metrics that can be useful, but it also has some disadvantages. Essentially, it measures the number of individuals who left a page after viewing it.

One of the main advantages of having a bounce rate is that it can help us identify areas where we can improve our website's performance. However, it's also useful to use it alongside the engagement rate in a given analysis.

Engagement Rate

One of the best ways to improve the bounce rate of Google Analytics 4 is by implementing the engagement rate metric. This is a calculation that takes into account the number of sessions that were engaged.

A main advantage of switching to an engagement rate metric is that it focuses on the positive rather than the negative. This is very useful as it allows you to improve the effectiveness of your marketing efforts and improve the efficiency of your website. Another advantage of this metric is that it allows you to measure the number of people who are interested in your offers and content.

In the default reports of Google Analytics 4, you will see the engagement rate displayed in the "Demographic Details" section. This report is part of the "Reports" category.

The Google Organic Traffic report will also show the engagement rate if you have linked to the Google Search Console. Unfortunately, this metric is not included in the "Engagement Overview" or "Pages and Screens" reports. You can still manually add it to these reports if you have admin-level permission. Image Courtesy of the Content Marketing Institute

When it comes to website engagement, the higher the number of people who are engaged, the more likely it is that there is higher than the bounce rate. This is because the number of people who were engaged is not just based on the number of pages that they viewed. In addition to being able to measure the number of individuals who were engaged, the engagement rate metric also takes into account other factors such as time and conversions.

In order to achieve a higher engagement rate, it is important that you analyze your content and look for ways to improve it. One of the most effective ways to do this is to review the engagement rate of your most important pages. You can then compare the rates of those with the highest and lowest rates to see if there is a difference that could be causing the lower engagement.

Get Started with Conversion Tracking in GA4 Today

One of the most important factors that you should consider when it comes to improving your business is having the ability to track conversions in Google Analytics. This will allow you to make informed decisions and improve the efficiency of your business.

Engagement and bounce rate are both useful metrics that can help you understand how engaged your audience is with your content. Although engagement rate may be more advantageous than bounce rate, you can still customize your reports in GA4 to report on the bounce rate. 

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