Google will be retiring the old Google Analytics, also known as universal analytics, in July 2023. They will be replacing this with Google Analytics 4 (GA4), which focuses more on engagement and multi-channel tracking.
Therefore, if you want to continue to monitor events on your website, such as contact form submissions, you must setup your goals and events through Google Tag Manager, otherwise your events won’t be recorded.
In this article, we’ll explore how you can setup goals or events in Google Analytics 4 (GA4) with Google Tag Manager. Before following these steps, you need to make sure that you have your GA4 property setup. We have written a step-by-setup guide* on how to do this.
Once you have your Google Analytics 4 property setup, the next step is to connect this to your website. If you have a WordPress website, the best plugin to use is Google Site Kit**, as this enables you to connect your analytics property to your website, and Google Tag Manager so that you can setup your goals and events within GA4.
Step 1: Create a website container within Google Tag Manager
Firstly, make sure that you are logged in to the same account as your Google Analytics, then go to: https://tagmanager.google.com/
Click on ‘Create Account’
And then the following screen will be shown, all you need to do is follow the instructions to setup a Tag Manager container for your website.
Within the container setup section, you need to select the target platform as ‘Web’. And then click the ‘Create’ button at the bottom.
Then you’ll be shown the following:
You just need to click the ‘X’ in the top right corner, as we’ll connect Google Tag Manager to your website later.
On the top left of the content, click on the new tag card to start setting up your tags. Name the first one: “Google Universal Analytics” on the top left and click Tag configuration. Select “Google Analytics: Universal Analytics” as the Tag type. The Track type can stay at page view. The Google Analytics Settings will need to be set to “New variable”. A new popover will open where you can name the new variable and set its settings.
Name this GA UA Tag and set the Tracking ID to the UA property from Site Kit (The UA-xxxxxx on the Settings > Analytics window). Once you’ve saved this, return to your Google Universal Analytics tag, where you’ll need to set the Triggering next. Set it to All Pages and Save this.
Continue by adding a new tag with the name: GA4. For the Tag configuration settings, you’ll need GA4 configuration. You can get the measurement ID from site kit as well (Site Kit > Settings > Analytics). Trigger this on All Pages too.
Add a new Tag: GA4 Event/CF Submission. The configuration for this one is: GA4 Event. The configuration tag dropdown will let you pick “GA4” tag you’ve defined before as the GA Configuration Tag. The event name is the event name you have set for the thank-you page redirects in Analytics > Configure > Events > Create Event. The other parameters are fine as is, just add a new Triggering option for this Tag.
When choosing the trigger, click the + icon on the top right to add a new one. Name it ‘Contact Form Submission’. The Trigger Configuration is: Page View. The trigger fires on: Some Page Views. Page URL equals thank-you (or whatever the thank you page is).
The Events are finally set up, so let’s save our changes, then click: Submit to apply them to the Tag Manager. A popover will open to Submit changes. Version name: UA/GA4/Events. Click publish. You can now close this and go back to Site Kit > Settings on the site backend.
Connect the Tag manager from here. The newly set up tag should appear on the bottom of the Account dropdown menu. Select it and that’s it. To check if it is working, you can check the Analytics settings on Site kit. It should say: “An existing Google Tag Manager property was found on your site with the ID UA-XXXXX. Since it refers to the same property selected here, Site Kit will not place its own tag and rely on the existing one. If later on you decide to remove this property, Site Kit can place a new tag for you.”
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