Google Analytics 4 is the new standard for traffic analytics measurement on your dealership’s website. Google switched from the “old” Google Analytics Universal properties to “GA4” in July of 2023.
Let’s talk about what you should know about GA4 and how to best use it to measure the traffic on your website.
Setting Up GA4 – It’s A Little Different
Different isn’t bad! GA4’s new methods of tracking reflect the complex nature of more modern car dealership websites. We’ll be honest, too: unless you intend to do a fair amount of reading and training, we suggest having your ad agency or website provider set up GA4 for you.
Why? Measuring the wrong things could be a setback for advertising platforms like Google Ads. It’s also kind of difficult to properly set up things like finance forms, so let the professionals do this instead!
Events And Conversions
On a basic level, you should at least have GA4 measure some actionable results like clicks to call, form fills, and any other method your website offers that gets your phone ringing or ends up in your CRM. You can also track VDPs to measure overall engagement from visitors.
Like Universal Analytics, GA4 allows you to measure these actions across all traffic on your website.
Where To Find Crucial Information
Once you have your conversions set up, you’ll want to know where to go to look at the critical information about your website traffic and, of course, about your vendors.
One of the better places to go within GA4 to find this information is the “Reports” tab, which should be the second option on the far left side of your screen. From there, click on “Engagement,” a tab that measures customers’ actions on your site. Then go to conversions (events are also possible, but for Google Ads and measuring quality traffic, we suggest moving the “Events” that are of the highest importance to “Conversions.”
From here, you can start to make comparisons. You’ll find a small “Add Comparison” button at the top middle of the screen that helps get you started. This will open a frame on the side of GA4. Head down to Traffic Sources, and you can begin comparing vendors by how often they convert.
Report Building In GA4
While the above method for finding conversions is helpful, report building can also give you plenty of info at a glance. The third button on your left side offers Reports. GA4 offers a lot of customization when it comes to building rows and columns for the data you want to see, which is another useful way of comparing historical performance and vendors.
Save these reports and use them another day!
Demographics Data
GA4 has data within the Demographic details report that tells you some of your visitor’s interests, potentially their age, gender, and location. These reports can be quite helpful in knowing who to target in other advertising.
For example, your OEM probably has a well-built personality profile of people who buy their vehicles by model. You can use that info, plus more local demographics, to know which kinds of people tend to convert best on your website and direct future advertising efforts to those kinds of people.
Conclusion
When properly set up and used on a regular basis, GA4 is a powerful tool to contribute to your advertising dollars. It can also definitely teach you where to make adjust