How to Track Conversions in Google Analytics

Tracking what matters is the foundation of any successful digital strategy, and conversions are what matter most. A "conversion" is a valuable action a user takes, like submitting a form, signing up for a newsletter, or making a purchase. This article will walk you through exactly how to set up conversion tracking in Google Analytics 4, from the simple toggle-a-switch method to more advanced tracking for custom button clicks.

What is a Conversion in GA4?

If you're used to Universal Analytics (UA), you'll remember setting up "Goals." In Google Analytics 4, the entire data model is built around events. An event is any interaction a user has with your site - a page view, a scroll, a click, a purchase. The good news is that in GA4, any event can be marked as a conversion.

This is an important shift. Instead of a separate system for goals, you simply tell GA4, "Hey, this specific event is really important to my business. I want to count it as a conversion." This simplifies the process and provides a lot more flexibility.

Common examples of valuable events you'd want to track as conversions include:

• A user submitting a contact or lead generation form.
• A customer completing a purchase.
• Someone signing up for your email newsletter.
• A visitor downloading a PDF guide or case study.
• Clicks on an important "Request a Demo" button.

Now, let's get into the step-by-step process of setting these up.

Method 1: Mark an Existing Event as a Conversion

The easiest way to start tracking conversions is to use an event that Google Analytics already collects automatically. When you set up GA4, it automatically starts tracking events like page_view, session_start, and first_visit. If you enable "Enhanced measurement," it also tracks events like scrolls (scroll), outbound clicks (click), and file downloads (file_download).

For some businesses, especially e-commerce stores, your core conversion might already be tracked. For example, a Shopify integration automatically sends a purchase event to GA4.

To mark one of these existing events as a conversion, the process is incredibly simple:

1. Log into your Google Analytics 4 property.
2. Click the Admin icon (the gear) in the bottom-left corner.
3. In the Property column, click on Events under the Data Streams section.
4. You'll see a list of all event names GA4 has collected in the selected date range. Find the event you want to track as a conversion (e.g., purchase).
5. On the right side of that event's row, simply turn on the toggle under the Mark as conversion column.

That's it! GA4 will now start counting every instance of that purchase event as a conversion in your reports. But what if the event you want to track doesn't exist yet?

Method 2: Create a New Event from a Thank You Page Visit

Let's tackle the most common conversion goal for service businesses, agencies, and consultancies: tracking a form submission. The classic way to do this is to redirect users to a "Thank You" or "Confirmation" page after they successfully submit a form. This gives us a unique page URL that we can use to create a new conversion event.

Here's how to set it up directly inside the GA4 interface:

Step-by-Step Instructions

1. Navigate back to Admin > Events.
2. Click the Create event button. Then, on the next screen, click Create.
4. Click Create in the top-right corner to save your new event rule.

Here's a key point: this newly created event won't appear in your Events list immediately. It can take anywhere from a few minutes to 24 hours to show up. Once you see lead_form_submission in the table under Admin > Events, you can switch on the "Mark as conversion" toggle, just like in Method 1.

Method 3: Advanced Tracking with Google Tag Manager

Methods 1 and 2 work great for conversions that either happen automatically or lead to a separate confirmation page. But what if you want to track an action that doesn't have a unique URL? For example:

• A form that shows a success message on the same page without redirecting.
• Clicks on a <a href="mailto:info@company.com"> email link.
• Clicks on a <a href="tel:+1_..." phone number link.
• Downloads for a specific whitepaper or PDF.

This is where the power of Google Tag Manager (GTM) comes in. It gives you granular control to track almost any specific on-page interaction. Let's walk through a common example: tracking clicks on a "Request Our Pricing Guide" button that contains a link to a PDF file.

This might seem technical, but it's a series of simple steps.

Step 1: Enable Click Variables in GTM

Before you can track clicks, you need to tell GTM to pay attention to them. In your GTM workspace, go to Variables from the left-hand menu. Under "Built-In Variables," click Configure. Scroll down to the "Clicks" section and check the boxes next to Click URL and Click Text. This makes them available for you to use in your triggers.

Step 2: Create a Trigger

A trigger is the condition that tells GTM when to fire your tag. In this case, our trigger is a user clicking the specific PDF download link.

1. Go to Triggers in GTM and click New.
2. Name your trigger something clear, like "Trigger - PDF Pricing Guide Click".
3. Click Trigger Configuration and select Just Links under the "Click" section.
4. Set it to fire on Some Link Clicks.
5. Now, set the condition for when this trigger should run. Let's say the pricing guide file is named pricing-guide-2024.pdf. You would set the firing rule as: Click URL | contains | .pdf (If you have multiple PDFs, you might use pricing-guide-2024.pdf for more specificity).
6. Save the trigger.

Step 3: Create a GA4 Event Tag

The tag is what sends the information to Google Analytics. Now we'll create a tag that fires whenever the trigger conditions are met.

1. Go to Tags in GTM and click New.
2. Name your tag clearly, like "GA4 Event - Pricing Guide Download".
3. Click Tag Configuration and choose Google Analytics: GA4 Event.
4. For the Configuration Tag, select your main GA4 configuration tag (you should already have this set up if GTM is installed correctly).
5. For the Event Name, enter a lowercase, descriptive name: pricing_guide_download.
6. In the Triggering section at the bottom, select the trigger you just created ("Trigger - PDF Pricing Guide Click").
7. Save the tag.

Step 4: Preview, Test, and Publish

Before making your changes live, it is essential to use GTM's Preview mode. Click Preview at the top right, enter your website URL, and test the button click. You should see your new tag fire in the GTM debug console. Once you confirm it's working, click Submit and then Publish to push your changes live.

Finally, just like with Method 2, after a day or so you'll need to go into the GA4 admin panel, find your new pricing_guide_download event, and mark it as a conversion.

Where to See Your Conversion Data

Once you have conversions set up and firing correctly, where can you actually see the data? There are a few key reports in GA4:

• Reports > Engagement > Conversions: This is the main summary report that lists all of your conversion events and shows counts, total users, and revenue associated with each.
• Reports > Acquisition > Traffic acquisition: This critical report shows you which marketing channels (e.g., Organic Search, Paid Search, Direct, Email) are driving the most conversions. You can see a conversion count per channel, helping you understand where to invest your marketing efforts.

By viewing conversions in the context of traffic acquisition, you stop looking at just traffic numbers and start focusing on traffic that actually drives business value.

Final Thoughts

Tracking conversions in Google Analytics 4 is a straightforward process once you understand its event-based model. Whether you are flagging an automatically collected event, creating a new event from a page visit, or using Google Tag Manager for more granular tracking, the final step is always flipping that "Mark as conversion" toggle in the admin settings.

Of course, monitoring conversions in GA4 is just one piece of the puzzle. You often have other crucial performance data scattered across Google Ads, Facebook Ads, Shopify, your CRM, and more. Tying all this together to see a unified view of your marketing performance can be incredibly time-consuming. Here at Graphed, we solve this by letting you connect all of your data sources in one place. You can then ask for reports and dashboards in plain English, like "Show me a chart comparing Facebook Ads spend vs GA4 conversions over the last month," and get a real-time visualization in seconds, keeping everything perfectly up-to-date automatically.