How to Set Up Goals in Google Analytics 4

If you're using Google Analytics, setting up goals is non-negotiable - after all, you can’t improve what you don’t measure. But if you’ve recently moved from Universal Analytics (UA) to Google Analytics 4, you might have noticed the familiar "Goals" section is gone. This article will show you how GA4 handles goals, now called "Conversions," and walk you through, step-by-step, how to set them up for your most important user actions.

Understanding the Big Change: From "Goals" to "Conversions"

The first thing to understand is that GA4 has a completely different data model than its predecessor. Universal Analytics was session-based, tracking user interactions within a specific visit. GA4 is event-based, meaning everything a user does - from a page view to a button click to a purchase - is tracked as an individual event.

Because of this shift, the old way of setting goals is gone:

• Destination Goals (e.g., visiting a /thank-you page)
• Duration Goals (e.g., session lasts 5 minutes)
• Pages/Session Goals (e.g., user views 3 pages)
• Event Goals (e.g., watching a video)

In GA4, there's a simpler concept: any event can be a conversion.

A "conversion" is just an event that you’ve told Google is important for your business. It could be a form submission, a new account sign-up, or a sale. Your job is no longer to define a "goal" from scratch but to identify the most valuable events already being tracked (or create a new one) and simply flip a switch to mark them as conversions.

Two Main Paths to Creating Conversions in GA4

You can set up conversions in two primary ways, depending on whether the user action is already being tracked as an event in GA4.

1. Marking an Existing Event as a Conversion: This is the simplest method. You take an event that GA4 is already collecting - like a purchase or a file_download - and tell Google that this event is a conversion.
2. Creating a New Custom Event from Other Events: This is for more specific actions that GA4 doesn’t track by default, like when a user visits a specific "Thank You" page or clicks a "Request a Demo" button. You first create a new event based on specific conditions, and then you mark that new event as a conversion.

Let's break down how to do both.

Method 1: Marking an Existing Event as a Conversion (The Easy Way)

Many important interactions are already tracked by GA4 through its "automatically collected" and "enhanced measurement" events. These include events like page_view, scroll (for 90% scroll depth), file_download, and video_start.

Additionally, GA4 has a list of "recommended events" with predefined names for common actions like online sales (purchase, add_to_cart) and lead generation (generate_lead, sign_up). If you’ve configured these, marking them as conversions is incredibly simple.

Step-by-Step Guide for Marking an Existing Event

Let's say you've already set up an event called generate_lead that fires every time someone submits your main contact form. Here’s how you’d turn that into a conversion.

1. Navigate to the Admin section by clicking the gear icon in the bottom-left corner of your GA4 interface.
2. In the Property column, find the Data display section and click on Events.
3. You'll see a list of all the event names GA4 has collected from your site. Find the event you want to treat as a conversion (e.g., generate_lead).
4. On the far right of that event's row, you'll see a toggle switch under the Mark as conversion column. Simply click the toggle to turn it on (it will turn blue).

That's it! Now, whenever GA4 records a generate_lead event, it will also count it as a conversion. You can verify it by going to Admin > Conversions. Your new conversion event should appear in that list within 24 hours.

Method 2: Creating a New Custom Event for Conversions

What if the action you want to track is more specific? This is where the real power of GA4's event-based model comes in. You can combine existing events and their parameters to create a new, custom event. The most common use case for this is replicating the classic "Destination Goal" from Universal Analytics - tracking a visit to a confirmation or "thank-you" page.

When You Might Need a Custom Event

• "Thank You" Page Visit: When a user submits a form and is redirected to yourwebsite.com/thank-you.
• Specific Button Click: When a user clicks a "Request a Pro Demo" button, but not the "Start Free Trial" button. You'd use the text or click ID to differentiate them.
• High-Value PDF Download: When the file_download event happens, but only for a specific file path (e.g., /downloads/pricing-guide.pdf).

Step-by-Step Guide: The "Thank You" Page Example

Let's walk through how to create a conversion for a user who lands on a /contact-us-thanks page after filling out a contact form. Since a visit to any page triggers the generic page_view event, we need to create a new event that only fires when a page_view happens on that specific URL.

1. Navigate to the Events Menu: Go to Admin > Data display > Events.
2. Start Creating a New Event: In the top-right corner of the table, click the blue Create event button. Then, on the next screen, click Create again.
3. Configure Your New Event: This is the most important step. You'll see a configuration panel. You need to tell GA4 two things: what to name your new event, and the rules (matching conditions) for when it should fire.

Fill out the fields as follows:

• Custom event name: Use a name like contact_thank_you.
• Matching conditions: Set rules to trigger this event only on specific pages:

Quick tip: Using "contains" is often more flexible than "equals" because it allows for URL variations like trailing slashes or UTM parameters.

1. Create the Event: Once your configuration looks correct, click the Create button in the top-right corner.
2. Wait, then Mark as Conversion: Your new custom event, contact_thank_you, won't appear immediately. It will only show up after a user triggers it. Once it appears in the event list (up to 24 hours), follow Method 1's steps to toggle it as a conversion.

You can now use this framework to create custom events for all sorts of specific interactions, giving you precise control over what you define as a conversion.

Tips for Success with GA4 Conversions

• Keep Your Naming Tidy: Use a clear, consistent naming convention like action_descriptor (e.g., click_primary_cta, submit_newsletter_form). This makes your reports much easier to read later.
• Test Your Setup: Don’t just set it and forget it. Use GA4’s DebugView (found in Admin > DebugView) to test your site in real-time and make sure your new custom events are firing when you expect them to.
• Don’t Mark Everything: Conversions should be reserved for your most valuable user actions - the things that mean your business is succeeding. Don't mark low-value events like scroll as a conversion, as it will just add noise to your reports. Standard GA4 properties have a limit of 30 conversions.
• Be Patient: Remember that GA4 has a processing delay. When you set up a new conversion, it won't appear immediately. It can sometimes take 24-48 hours.

Final Thoughts

Moving from Universal Analytics goals to GA4 conversions is primarily a shift in mindset. Instead of thinking in terms of sessions and specific goal types, you need to think in terms of user actions, or events. By either marking important existing events as conversions or creating your own custom events for specific user behaviors, you can get a powerful, flexible, and much more accurate measurement of what's driving success on your site.

While configuring conversions in GA4 is essential, we know it’s just the start of the data analysis battle. The next step is connecting that conversion data with information from your ad platforms, CRM, and sales tools to understand the complete customer journey. To eliminate this manual reporting work, we built Graphed. After one-click-connecting your GA4 account, you can simply ask questions in plain English, like "Show me a chart of my top 5 conversions last quarter, broken down by traffic source." Graphed instantly builds you a live dashboard, so your team can get actionable insights without needing to become GA4 dashboarding wizards.