GA4 Setup Guide: Everything You Need to Track in 2026

Why GA4 Is the Only Analytics Platform That Matters

Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is Google's current analytics platform, and it has been the sole option since Universal Analytics (UA) was officially retired. If you are still trying to make sense of the transition, confused by the new interface or unsure whether your setup is capturing the data you actually need, you are not alone. GA4 represents a fundamental shift in how web analytics works – from session-based tracking to event-based tracking – and many UK businesses are still running on incomplete or misconfigured implementations.

The stakes are high. Without accurate analytics, every marketing decision is based on assumption rather than evidence. You cannot optimise what you cannot measure, and in 2026, the businesses that thrive are the ones that understand their data deeply and act on it decisively.

This guide walks you through setting up GA4 properly from the ground up – covering everything from initial property creation to advanced configurations that most businesses miss entirely.

GA4 vs Universal Analytics: What Changed and Why

Understanding why Google built GA4 helps you use it more effectively. Universal Analytics was designed in an era when most website interactions happened on desktop, within single sessions, and could be neatly categorised as pageviews. That model no longer reflects how people actually use the web.

Key Differences

Event-based model: In GA4, everything is an event – pageviews, clicks, scrolls, form submissions, purchases. This provides far more flexibility in tracking user interactions.
Cross-platform tracking: GA4 is designed to track users across websites and apps in a unified view, giving you a complete picture of customer journeys.
Privacy-centric design: GA4 is built for a world of cookie restrictions, GDPR and declining third-party data. It uses machine learning to fill gaps where tracking data is incomplete.
Predictive analytics: GA4 includes built-in predictive metrics – such as purchase probability and churn probability – powered by Google's machine learning models.
BigQuery integration: Every GA4 property can export raw data to BigQuery for free, enabling advanced analysis that was previously only available to enterprise users.

Setting Up Your GA4 Property

Step 1: Create a GA4 Property

If you do not already have a GA4 property, here is how to create one:

Sign in to analytics.google.com with your Google account
Click "Admin" (the gear icon in the bottom-left corner)
In the Account column, select the appropriate account (or create a new one)
Click "Create Property"
Enter a property name (typically your website or business name), select your reporting time zone (set to your UK time zone) and choose British Pounds as your currency
Complete the business information questions – these influence which default reports GA4 surfaces for you

Step 2: Configure Your Data Stream

A data stream tells GA4 where your data is coming from. For most UK businesses, you need a web data stream:

Select "Web" as your platform
Enter your website URL and give the stream a name
Enable "Enhanced Measurement" – this automatically tracks several useful events (see below)
Note your Measurement ID (it starts with "G-") – you will need this to install the tracking code

Step 3: Install the Tracking Code

You have two options for installation:

Option A: Google Tag Manager (recommended)

If you use Google Tag Manager (GTM), create a new "Google Analytics: GA4 Configuration" tag, enter your Measurement ID and set it to fire on all pages. This is the preferred method because GTM gives you greater control over your tracking without modifying your website's code directly.

Option B: Direct installation

Copy the Global Site Tag (gtag.js) snippet from your data stream settings and paste it into the <head> section of every page on your website. If you use a CMS like WordPress, most SEO or analytics plugins provide a field for this.

Step 4: Verify Data Collection

After installation, verify that data is flowing correctly:

Go to "Reports" and then "Realtime" in GA4
Open your website in another browser tab and navigate around
You should see your activity appearing in the Realtime report within seconds
Use the Google Tag Assistant Chrome extension for more detailed debugging

Enhanced Measurement: Free Tracking Out of the Box

GA4's Enhanced Measurement feature automatically tracks several common interactions without any additional configuration. When you enable it (which you should), the following events are tracked automatically:

page_view: Every page load
scroll: When a user scrolls to the bottom of a page (90% depth)
click (outbound): Clicks on links that lead to external domains
site_search: When a user performs a search on your website
video_engagement: Play, progress and completion events for embedded YouTube videos
file_download: Clicks on links to downloadable files (PDFs, documents, spreadsheets, etc.)
form_interaction: When a user starts and submits a form

Review the Enhanced Measurement settings and toggle off any events that are not relevant to your website. For most businesses, leaving them all enabled is the right choice.

Essential Events You Should Track

Enhanced Measurement covers the basics, but to get real value from GA4, you need to track events specific to your business goals. Here are the essential events most UK businesses should configure.

Lead Generation Events

generate_lead: Triggered when a user submits a contact form, enquiry form or quote request
phone_call_click: Triggered when a user clicks a click-to-call phone number link
email_click: Triggered when a user clicks a mailto: email link
live_chat_start: Triggered when a user initiates a live chat conversation

E-commerce Events

If you sell products online, GA4 has a comprehensive set of recommended e-commerce events:

view_item: User views a product page
add_to_cart: User adds a product to their basket
begin_checkout: User starts the checkout process
add_payment_info: User enters payment details
purchase: User completes a transaction (include revenue, tax and transaction ID)

Engagement Events

scroll_depth: Track scroll at 25%, 50%, 75% and 100% thresholds (more granular than Enhanced Measurement's 90% only)
cta_click: Track clicks on specific call-to-action buttons
content_download: Track when users download specific resources like guides, whitepapers or brochures
newsletter_signup: Track newsletter or mailing list subscriptions

Setting Up Custom Events

Custom events allow you to track interactions that are unique to your website and business. There are two primary methods for creating them.

Method 1: Google Tag Manager (Recommended)

GTM is the most flexible way to create custom events:

Create a new tag with the "Google Analytics: GA4 Event" tag type
Enter your event name (use snake_case, e.g., "quote_form_submit")
Add any event parameters you want to capture (e.g., form_name, form_location)
Set the trigger to fire on the appropriate user interaction (button click, form submission, page load, etc.)

Method 2: GA4 Interface

GA4 allows you to create custom events based on existing events:

Go to Admin then Events then Create Event
Define conditions that match an existing event with specific parameter values
This is useful for creating more specific events from broader ones – for example, creating a "contact_page_view" event from page_view events where page_location contains "/contact"

Event Naming Conventions

Establish a consistent naming convention from the start. Use snake_case (lowercase with underscores), be descriptive and group related events with common prefixes. For example: form_submit_contact, form_submit_quote, form_submit_newsletter. This makes analysis and reporting far more manageable as your event count grows.

Conversion Tracking

In GA4, any event can be marked as a conversion (now called a "key event" in the latest interface updates). This tells GA4 which events represent your most valuable user actions and enables conversion-focused reporting, attribution modelling and Google Ads optimisation.

How to Mark Events as Conversions

Go to Admin then Events
Find the event you want to mark as a conversion
Toggle the "Mark as key event" switch

Which Events Should Be Conversions?

Only mark events that represent genuinely valuable actions – the actions that lead directly to revenue or are critical steps in your sales funnel. For most businesses, this includes:

Form submissions (enquiries, quote requests, contact forms)
Completed purchases
Phone call clicks
Demo or trial sign-ups
Booking confirmations

Avoid marking low-value events (like pageviews or scroll events) as conversions. This dilutes your conversion data and makes reporting less meaningful.

Audience Segments

GA4's audience builder allows you to create defined groups of users based on their behaviour, demographics or traffic source. These audiences serve two critical purposes: they power more targeted analysis in your reports, and they can be shared with Google Ads for remarketing campaigns.

Audiences Worth Creating

Converters: Users who have completed a key conversion event – useful as a baseline for comparison
High-value visitors: Users who viewed your pricing page, spent more than three minutes on site or viewed more than five pages
Cart abandoners: Users who added to cart but did not purchase (for e-commerce)
Blog readers: Users who engaged with your blog content – valuable for understanding the blog's role in conversions
Returning visitors who have not converted: Users who came back multiple times but never completed a key event
Location-based audiences: Users from specific regions you want to analyse or target

Building an Audience

Navigate to Admin then Audiences then New Audience. Define your conditions using a combination of events, user properties, traffic sources and demographic data. Set a membership duration (how long a user remains in the audience after qualifying). Save the audience and it will begin populating immediately – note that audiences are not retroactive and only include users from the point of creation onwards.

Explore Reports: Your Advanced Analysis Toolkit

GA4's standard reports provide a solid overview, but the real analytical power lies in the Explore section. Explore reports allow you to build custom analyses that answer specific business questions.

Key Explore Report Types

Free-form exploration: Build custom tables and charts by dragging and dropping dimensions and metrics – the most flexible report type
Funnel exploration: Visualise the steps users take towards conversion and identify where drop-offs occur – essential for CRO
Path exploration: See the sequences of pages and events users follow through your site – reveals common user journeys and unexpected navigation patterns
Segment overlap: Compare how different audience segments overlap – useful for understanding whether your blog readers become converters, for example
User lifetime: Analyse user behaviour over their entire relationship with your website, not just within a single session
Cohort exploration: Group users by their acquisition date and track how their behaviour changes over time

Invest time in learning the Explore interface. It is significantly more powerful than the standard reports and allows you to extract insights that would be impossible to find otherwise.

Connecting GA4 to Google Ads

If you run Google Ads campaigns, linking your GA4 property to your Google Ads account is essential. This connection enables several high-value capabilities:

Import conversions: Use GA4 conversion events as Google Ads conversion actions, giving the Ads algorithm better data for optimisation
Share audiences: Push GA4 audiences to Google Ads for remarketing campaigns targeting specific user segments
See Ads data in GA4: View Google Ads campaign performance alongside your website analytics for a unified picture
Enhanced attribution: Benefit from GA4's data-driven attribution model, which provides a more accurate view of how your Ads campaigns contribute to conversions

How to Link

In GA4, go to Admin then Google Ads Links
Click "Link" and select your Google Ads account
Enable auto-tagging and personalised advertising (unless you have specific reasons not to)
After linking, import your GA4 key events into Google Ads via the Conversions section in your Ads account

BigQuery Export: Raw Data for Advanced Analysis

One of GA4's most significant advantages over Universal Analytics is the free BigQuery export. BigQuery is Google's data warehouse, and exporting your GA4 data to it gives you access to raw, unsampled, event-level data that you can query with SQL.

Why BigQuery Matters

No data sampling: GA4's interface samples data on high-traffic properties, which can distort your analysis. BigQuery gives you the complete, unsampled dataset.
Custom analysis: Write SQL queries to answer complex questions that the GA4 interface cannot handle
Data retention: GA4 retains detailed data for a maximum of 14 months. BigQuery stores it indefinitely.
Integration: Connect BigQuery to visualisation tools like Looker Studio, Tableau or Power BI for custom dashboards
Machine learning: Use BigQuery ML to build predictive models on your analytics data

Setting Up the Export

Create a Google Cloud project and enable BigQuery (the free tier is sufficient for most small to medium businesses)
In GA4, go to Admin then BigQuery Links
Select your Google Cloud project and configure the export – choose daily export for most use cases
Data will begin flowing within 24 hours

Even if you do not plan to query BigQuery immediately, enable the export now. You cannot backfill historical data, so every day you delay is data you lose permanently.

Common GA4 Setup Mistakes

After auditing dozens of GA4 implementations for UK businesses, these are the mistakes we encounter most frequently:

Not filtering internal traffic: Without excluding your own team's visits, your data is polluted with non-customer behaviour. Set up an internal traffic filter using IP addresses or Google's built-in "traffic_type" parameter.
Wrong time zone and currency: If your property is set to US Pacific time and USD, your date-based reports and revenue data will be incorrect for a UK business.
Not extending data retention: By default, GA4 retains event data for only 2 months. Go to Admin then Data Settings then Data Retention and change this to 14 months – the maximum available.
Ignoring cross-domain tracking: If your website spans multiple domains (e.g., your main site and a separate booking system), you need to configure cross-domain tracking to avoid counting the same user twice.
Duplicate tracking codes: Installing GA4 through both GTM and a direct code snippet results in every event being counted twice. Use one method only.
Not setting up conversion events: Without marking key events as conversions, your reports lack the most important metric – whether users are actually doing what you want them to do.
Ignoring consent mode: In the UK, GDPR requires user consent before tracking. Implement Google Consent Mode v2 to ensure compliance while still collecting modelled data from users who decline cookies.
No UTM tagging on campaigns: Without consistent UTM parameters on your marketing links, GA4 cannot accurately attribute traffic to specific campaigns, emails or social posts.
Using default channel groupings without review: GA4's automatic channel groupings sometimes misclassify traffic. Review and create custom channel groups if needed to ensure accurate reporting.

GA4 Maintenance: Ongoing Best Practices

Setting up GA4 is not a one-time task. To maintain data quality and get the most from the platform, schedule regular maintenance:

Monthly: Review your key event (conversion) tracking to ensure all events are firing correctly. Check the Realtime and DebugView reports.
Monthly: Audit your traffic sources for any "(not set)" or "(other)" classifications that indicate tracking issues
Quarterly: Review your audiences and update them based on evolving business goals
Quarterly: Check for new GA4 features – Google releases updates frequently and new capabilities may benefit your setup
Annually: Conduct a full GA4 audit, reviewing your property settings, data streams, events, conversions, audiences and integrations

Making Data-Driven Decisions

A properly configured GA4 setup is the foundation of data-driven marketing. It tells you which channels drive the most valuable traffic, where users struggle on your website, which content resonates with your audience and whether your marketing spend is delivering a positive return. Without it, you are navigating blind.

At Dynamically, our GA4 setup and configuration service ensures your analytics implementation is accurate, comprehensive and aligned with your business objectives. We handle everything from initial property creation and event tracking to BigQuery export, Google Ads integration and ongoing data quality audits.

Not sure if your GA4 setup is capturing what you need? Get in touch with Dynamically for a free GA4 audit and we will tell you exactly what is missing, what is misconfigured and what opportunities your current data is hiding.