A well-executed Google Analytics (GA4) implementation is the key to tapping into richer, more insightful metrics that span every touchpoint your users interact with. In other words, you’ll get the tools to truly know your customers, so you can connect with them in ways that matter and guide them through every step of their journey.
Gone are the days of digital guesswork — with GA4 (and the premium GA360) replacing Universal Analytics (UA), you’re able to take a more granular, event-based approach to data tracking. This allows for more flexible insights than the session-based metrics of UA, while still allowing for session tracking. Plus, GA4 supercharges your analytics with AI-driven insights, capturing cleaner, more precise data from platforms such as Android, iOS, and the web. What’s more, GA4 has privacy on lock, giving users more control over their data, from consent to deletion.
By embedding GA4 best practices into your websites and applications, your analytics become the perfect match for your business goals, giving you sharp, actionable insights into how people engage with your brand online — because better data leads to better decisions.
But keep in mind: GA4’s results are only as good as the groundwork you lay. That’s where our GA4 implementation checklist comes in — your step-by-step guide to fine-tuning your analytics to meet your business’s needs today and keep pace with tomorrow.
Getting Started With GA4: Setup & Implementation Checklist
We’ll kick off our GA4 implementation checklist by laying the groundwork for analytics you can feel confident in, then we’ll move on to fine-tuning your settings to get the laser-focused data you need to uncover customer pain points.
Setting up GA4
When you go to the Google Analytics page, you’ll be greeted by a big blue button inviting you to Start Measuring, which will bring you directly into the GA4 implementation workflow.
- Enter Your Account Name: This is your business or organization’s name. Think of this as the bucket Google will use to hold all the data you’re about to collect.
- Select Your Data Sharing Settings: Choose whether to share data with Google to unlock tools such as product improvements, troubleshooting, recommendations, and enhanced data modeling.
- Identify Your Property: You can also use the name of your business or organization here; you’ll also want to pick your time zone and confirm your currency. Any metrics will be automatically converted to display using these time and currency settings.
- Describe Your Property: Choose your industry, company size, and the primary objectives for your business (these will help GA4 figure out what to focus on). If you’re not sure which objective(s) to choose, Get Baseline Reports will give you a variety of options to explore GA4’s capabilities.
- Accept Google’s Terms of Service: You’re halfway through initial setup — at this point, you’ve created the containers for your data and established a baseline for how GA4 will analyze it.
- Create Your First Data Stream: Choose a data source for your stream, whether it’s a website, Android app, or iOS app. Then, enter the URL and app ID, name your stream, activate Enhanced Measurement, and click Create.
- Add the Data Stream ID in Google Tag Manager: Once you’ve created a data stream, GA4 will generate a unique data stream ID. To implement this in Google Tag Manager, create a GA4 Configuration Tag and enter the data stream ID in the designated field. This ensures that your website or app is properly linked to GA4, allowing for accurate data. Then, once configured, you can add additional GA4 event tags for specific user interactions. (P.S. Need help setting up Google Tag Manager? Give us a call.)
Later in our GA4 implementation checklist, we’ll cover where you can add more unique data streams to your property, feeding it even more valuable information to analyze.
Tap into Your Data’s Full Potential With These Best Practices
Setup and implementation are only the first step — to get the most out of your data, you’ll need to take full advantage of GA4’s features and capabilities is key. Here’s how:
Conversion Tracking & Events
Conversions — also known as Key Events — track when someone on your website completes a specific action. GA4 tracks every interaction as an event, rather than a session, which means that every page view, click, scroll, and interaction is captured as a data point. Conversion tracking hones in on the data that matters most, giving you a clear view into your most valuable online interactions.
GA4 organizes events into four main categories:
- Automatically Collected Events: Tracks basic user engagement such as session start time and page views
- Enhanced Measurement Events: Enabled during data stream creation, this tracks on-page interactions such as clicks, scrolls, and downloads
- Recommended Events: Predefined actions such as logins or social shares that you can activate for more specific tracking
- Custom Events: User-defined events with custom parameters based on your unique business needs to generate fully customized reports and explorations
To create a Key Event, you’ll need to either identify existing events or follow GA4 best practices to build a new one from scratch. Here’s how to create an event:
- Click on Admin at the bottom of the left menu bar.
- Click Data Display.
- Select Events.
- Name your custom events and set its parameters.
- Save your event by clicking the Create button in the top right corner.
For example, if you wanted to track email sign-ups where a thank you page displayed after a successful sign-up, you might name the event “generate_lead” and set the first parameter line as “event_name | equals | page_view”. Then, you’d create a second parameter line with “page_location | contains | thank-you”. This tells GA4 to count the loading of the thank you page as a unique “generate_lead” event.
Now that your event is ready, here’s how to make it a Key Event:
- In the left menu bar, click Key Events under Data Display.
- Click the blue New Key Event button.
- Add your event’s name and toggle Mark as Key Event on.
And there — your custom event is now recognized as a Key Event, ready for reporting.
Attribution Models & Data Retention
GA4 simplifies attribution modeling with two choices: data-driven and last-click. Google recommends data-driven attribution as the most accurate and adaptable model for seeing the entire customer journey, and it’s the default setting when you first implement GA4.
Data-driven attribution captures customers’ interactions with your company across multiple sessions and devices using unique identifiers. It assigns a value to each interaction, helping you pinpoint which marketing efforts or ads played the biggest role in driving conversions. You can choose to retain this data for two or 14 months; you can also choose to have the data reset on new activity.
In most cases, a 14-month retention period is your best bet — after all, more data equals more accurate reporting and smarter insights.
Last click attribution, on the other hand, focuses on the final ad or marketing touchpoint that led to a conversion. The idea is simple: The last interaction is what motivated the customer to act, so it gets all the credit. While this model is more straightforward, especially for newer users, it doesn’t deliver the top-of-funnel data you need to capture the initial stages of the customer journey.
To adjust these settings, click the Admin cog in the left menu bar and head to Data Collection and Modification.
- Data Streams: Add more streams to your property to capture data from multiple platforms, following users wherever their journey takes them.
- Data Collection: Turn on Google Signals to collect richer demographic profiles and unlock better segmentation for targeted ads and remarketing. You can also enable Granular Location Collection to get city-level data and fine-tune your ad personalization.
- Data Retention: Choose between two or 14 months for retaining user and event data. You can also enable GA4 to reset the retention clock with every new user interaction.
- Data Filters: Filter out internal traffic to reduce the margin of error in your metrics. By blocking QA and campaign testing data from skewing your results, you’ll get a clearer picture of your real audience.
Advanced GA4 Features
By following best practices in your GA4 implementation, you’re not just collecting data — you’re unlocking powerful tools for advanced analysis, visualization, and actionable insights. With machine learning baked into GA4, stakeholders can predict user behavior and make smarter marketing decisions through predictive metrics.
Once you’ve had about 28 days of user activity, GA4 can begin using predictive modeling to forecast trends such as future revenue, purchase likelihood, churn rates, and how your audience might evolve. These predictions enable you to pivot your marketing and ad campaigns before trends happen, keeping you one step ahead.
You can also link GA4 after implementation to many of Google’s other platforms and services. Here’s how to connect those dots:
- Click on Admin at the bottom of the left menu bar.
- Scroll down to the Product Links section to connect GA4 with:
- BigQuery: Dig deeper into your data with one of the most powerful analytics platforms out there. Big data, meet big insights.
- AdSense, Ads, and Ad Manager: Level up your ad game by linking GA4 with Google’s ad services. More data means more informed, data-driven strategies.
- Google Play: Sync your Google Play properties for seamless cross-platform data collection. Know what your users are doing across devices.
- Search Console: Bring search metrics into the mix so you can track how people find your business long before they land on your site.
Monitoring and Reporting
GA4 offers two ways to view your data: reports and explorations that leverage historical data points or real-time reporting that gives you a snapshot over the last 30 minutes.
Clicking Reports in the left menu bar will bring you to the overview dashboard, where you can instantly access real-time data or recommended reports baked on your initial setup. The left-side menu also offers shortcuts to curated report collections, or you can dive into the Library section at the bottom to access all available reports and build custom collections tailored to your business.
In the real-time dashboard, you’ll get a live look at user activity in the past 30 minutes, including geographic locations, top events, key audience segments, and the most valuable attributions. Real-time reports are your go-to for:
- Tracking short-term campaign or content performance
- Quality checking your data in real-time so you can adjust settings for long-term accuracy
- Pinpointing issues in newly launched or small-scale campaigns before full-fledged rollout
For more in-depth analysis, Explorations are your most flexible analysis and visualization tool, enabling you to drill down into user activity and break it down into defined segments:
- Free-form explorations let you define reporting variables, so you can create fully visualized, stakeholder-friendly reports on the data that matters most to your business.
- Funnel explorations let you see where users are abandoning their journey so you can smooth out the rough spots.
- Path explorations help you understand the choices your customers make on their way to conversions, so you can optimize their experience at every step.
Common GA4 Pitfalls & How to Avoid Them
By following the guidance we’re shared, you can avoid some of the most common GA4 mistakes — mistakes such as:
- Not Taking Advantage of Google’s Full Suite of Tools: Google offers users a wide range of metrics tools powered by its extensive digital resources and machine learning capabilities. If you’re not tapping into the full spectrum of what GA4 and the Google platform has to offer, you’re missing out on a unified, comprehensive picture of your business’s digital engagement.
- Failing to Adjust Data Retention Settings: GA4’s default retention period is two months; if you don’t adjust the retention period during setup, your user data will disappear after that time. While two months is fine for certain use cases, most users prefer to extend their retention period to 14 months for more comprehensive, detailed, and accurate reporting.
- Taking Only the Reports You’re Given: GA4’s recommended reports are a solid foundation, but you’re looking to grow, not just get by. Leverage custom explorations, build tailored report collections, and make use of the real-time dashboard to unlock the full potential of your data.
- Forgetting to Filter Internal Traffic: Your team’s testing and quality assurance activities can generate loads of data that don’t reflect the real customer experience. If you don’t enable internal traffic filtering during GA4 implementation, you’ll end up with skewed metrics that muddy your insights.
Set Your Analytics up for Success
By following these GA4 best practices, you’ll equip your business with the tools to make smarter, data-driven decisions that pave the way for future success. (You can even save them for later by downloading a free, PDF version of our GA4 checklist here.)
Need a hand in building a rock-solid analytics foundation? We offer fully customized GA4 consulting services backed by a team of experts, so you can tell more compelling stories with your data. Get in touch today to find out how we can help you implement, migrate, or manage GA4.
