GA4 for a small business: Google Analytics 4 in three reports and one key event

Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is Google’s tool for seeing how people reach and use your website. A small business needs very little of it: three reports (Traffic acquisition, Landing page and User acquisition) and one key event, such as a submitted enquiry form. Set those up, check them once a month, and ignore the rest until you have a question they cannot answer.

What GA4 does for a small business

GA4 counts visits to your website and records what visitors do, through small pieces of tracking code. It answers questions such as: where did visitors come from, which pages did they land on, and did they do the thing that matters, like sending an enquiry?

It does not tell you who phoned, which visitor became a paying customer or what happened after the enquiry unless you record that somewhere. It also differs from Google Search Console, which shows what happens in Google before the click. Use both: Search Console for how you appear, GA4 for what visitors do on your site.

GA4 has many reports, and the menu can feel crowded. Do not try to learn it all. Choose the few that support a decision.

The one thing to set up first: a key event

An event is an action GA4 records, such as a page view or a click. A key event is an event you mark as important to your business. For most service businesses that is a completed enquiry: a form submission, a booking or a tap on the phone number.

Google’s page on marking events as key events explains the steps:

1. In Admin, under Data display, open Events.
2. If the event already appears in the list, click the star next to it. This needs the Editor role or higher on the property.
3. If it does not exist yet, click Create event, enter a name, turn on the “Mark as key event” toggle and save. This needs the Marketer role or higher.

Google also says changes apply from the moment you make them and do not alter older data, standard reports can take up to 24 hours to show key events, and standard properties can have up to 30 key events. You will not need anywhere near that many. One or two are enough.

Which one? Pick the action that comes just before a sale for you. For a tradesperson it might be the “thank you” page after a quote request. For a clinic it might be an online booking. Google publishes a list of recommended events that includes events for lead generation, and using a recommended name where one fits keeps your data consistent. Whatever name you choose, use the same one on every form, because a different spelling creates a separate row.

The simplest way to test is to submit your own form after the change, wait a day, then look for the key event in reports. Ask your web provider to set up the event if you are not comfortable with tag settings, because a broken tag counts nothing and shows no error.

Report one: Traffic acquisition

Go to Reports, then Acquisition, then Traffic acquisition. Google’s help page says it shows where visitors to your website come from, for both new and returning users. Its default view groups traffic into channels such as Direct, Organic Search, Paid Social, Organic Social and Email, and its columns include sessions, engagement rate and key events.

What to look for each month:

• Which channels bring the most visits?
• Which channels bring key events, not just visits? A channel with many visits and no enquiries is a prompt to look at the landing page, not to celebrate the traffic.
• Is Organic Search steady or falling?

Channels depend on tagging. Google’s page on traffic-source dimensions says missing UTM parameters result in “(not set)” values in reporting, so tag the links in your emails, social posts and ads. Our guide to marketing attribution for a small business explains how.

Report two: Landing page

Go to Reports, then Engagement, then Landing page. Google’s Landing page report shows the first page each visitor lands on in a session, with columns including sessions, new users, key events and average engagement time. If it is missing from your menu, an Editor can add it back.

This is the report to use when you ask “Which of my pages actually bring in enquiries?” Sort by sessions and compare the key events. A page with many visits and no enquiries needs work: a clearer headline, the phone number and form higher up, a faster load on a phone. A page with few visits and many enquiries is worth linking to from more places.

Add a secondary dimension such as Session source / medium, which Google says is possible, to see where each page’s visitors came from. A service page that gets visits from Google but not enquiries is a different problem from one that gets visits from a Facebook ad.

Report three: User acquisition

The User acquisition report sits next to Traffic acquisition and looks similar, but it answers another question. Google’s comparison of the two reports says User acquisition is scoped to new users and uses “first user” dimensions, while Traffic acquisition is scoped to sessions. Google advises against comparing metric values across them.

Its example: a person first arrives from Google and later returns ten times by typing your address. User acquisition credits all eleven sessions to Google, while Traffic acquisition may show the returns as direct. Use User acquisition to judge how well each channel attracts new people, and Traffic acquisition to judge what each visit does.

Settings worth checking in the first week

• Data retention. Google’s data retention page says standard properties can keep user-level and event-level data for 2 or 14 months, and the setting lives in Admin under Data Settings, then Data Retention, and needs the Editor role. Choose 14 months. The page says standard aggregated reports are unaffected, but explorations are limited by the setting.
• Enhanced measurement. In Admin, under Data streams, you can switch enhanced measurement events on or off. Leave it on unless your web provider says otherwise.
• Who has access. Give your web provider or marketer their own access as a user. Remove people who have left.
• Your own visits. Staff browsing the site can inflate the numbers. Ask your web provider whether internal traffic is filtered out.

A worked example

Suppose, for illustration, an outdoor building contractor’s site had 400 visits last month and your Landing page report shows the retaining walls page received 120 of them and produced 1 enquiry, while the paving page received 40 and produced 4. The numbers are invented, but the lesson is real. Paving visitors are far more likely to enquire, so it is worth asking why. Perhaps that page shows prices and photos and the phone number at the top, and the retaining walls page opens with three paragraphs of text. You have a specific change to test and a clear way to see whether it worked next month.

Mistakes that make GA4 misleading

• No key event set. Without one, you can see traffic but not results.
• Marking too many events. If scrolling and clicking are all key events, the count means nothing. Keep it to actions that lead to revenue.
• Comparing the two acquisition reports. Google says not to compare their metric values.
• Forgetting the trend. One month on its own is noise. Compare three months with the three before.
• Trusting it without testing. Submit your own form and check it appears.

A ten-minute monthly check

1. Open Traffic acquisition for the last 28 days and compare with the previous period.
2. Note total key events, and which channels they came from.
3. Open Landing page. Pick the one service page with the most visits and fewest enquiries.
4. Write down one change to make to that page, and who will make it.
5. Check the number of enquiries GA4 reports against the enquiries you actually received. If they differ widely, the tracking needs fixing before you trust any report.

That last check matters most. GA4 can miss a form if the tag is broken, or count a double submission twice. Your own enquiry record is the truth, and GA4 is the way to see where the visits came from.

When to ask for help

Ask for help when you need a key event on a phone tap, a booking widget or a form inside a third-party tool, because those need tracking set up in the site code. Ask also when the numbers look wrong, for instance when form submissions show up as zero for a week.

CentriWeb is a founder-led technology studio in New Zealand working online with businesses worldwide. Our website work includes setting up tracking so each enquiry is counted, and our marketing work turns those numbers into a monthly report you can act on.