B2B: Tracking events and conversions

Universal Analytics will cease to collect data on July 1. Google Analytics 4 is required for B2B companies who want to track the performance of their website or apps.

GA4 offers a wide range of capabilities for visualizing data and analysing it.

It is important to understand the tool, and identify key metrics that are relevant for your business. This will ensure that web traffic is accurately measured in GA4.

This guide explains how to track and set up events for B2B businesses.

How can I measure website traffic using GA4?

GA4’s Acquisition Reports are divided into 2 main groups, each with a different purpose.

• User Acquisition Report This report gives insights into the acquisition and capture of users for the first time.
• Traffic Acquisition Report: This reports operates at the session-level and helps identify which campaign each session is from.

These reports can be used by companies to analyse the traffic or users on their website, regardless of whether they are B2B or ecommerce.

The situation changes, however, when you switch to the next report, Engagement Report. This report allows you to analyze conversions and events.

The tool defaults to a list of all events that are listed on our site. Although they all may look useful, they are not all equally important.

How can you measure the value of B2B events? Let’s find it out.

How to track conversions and events in GA4 for B2B businesses

Define your key KPIs to measure the performance of your business

The first step to effectively tracking the conversions of a B2B site is to identify the KPIs that are most important for your company.

The main conversions of B2B businesses include:

• Form submissions (requests, budgets, etc.)
• Lead generation (newsletter subscriptions, calls, information requests, etc.)
• File downloads (handbooks, instructions, technical data sheets, etc.)
• Video Reproductions

You’ll see that GA4 records events differently when you view the conversions or events report for the very first time.

But none of them corresponds to the KPIs defined for a B2B site.

You need to set up each event type and identify it in order to track your B2B conversions.

GA4 Event Classification

In GA4

• Events are metrics that measure specific interactions of users on a site, like loading a webpage, clicking a link, or submitting a web form.
• The conversions of a website are what you should highlight.

There are four different ways to classify events in GA4

• The events that are automatically recorded are divided into:
  • Events automatically collected : Events that GA4 automatically collects.
  • Measurement events When enhanced measurement is activated, these events will be automatically measured.
• Recommended Events : Events that you can implement by yourself, with predefined parameters and names. It is mainly done through Google Tag Manager.
• Custom Events : Events fully defined by owners through Google Tag Manager.

To create events for your website, it is best to use the GA4 guidelines. Google Tag Manager allows you to create events in a customized or recommended way.

Configuring events in GA4: From KPIs to events

You need to know how to accurately set up the data collection event once you’ve defined your main KPIs.

The key events on B2B sites are not automatically triggered. These events must be tracked with GA4 and Google Tag Manager.

Take a look at them all.

File downloads

Want to know when someone opens or downloads an online file (such a datasheet or product manual)?

The best solution is to use download.

This event is triggered by a user clicking a link that leads to a common file extension, such as a document, text file, executable, presentation, compressed file, video, or audio.

Select the data and activate Enhanced Measurement to activate this event.

Check if the Downloads Event is active.

Google Analytics 4 triggers an file_download Event when the clicked file extension matches the following regex.


pdf|xlsx?|docx?|txt|rtf|csv|exe|key|pp(s|t|tx)|7z|pkg|rar|gz|zip|avi|mov|mp4|mpe?g|wmv|midi?|mp3|wav|wma


Go to DebugView.

When the event is tracked, all works as planned.

Mark it as a “conversion” so that this metric’s results will be included in the reports for events and conversions.

To mark an event as a “conversion”, go to Admin > Conversions.

When you use DebugView to validate the event, it will no longer be displayed in blue.

It will instead appear in green to indicate that it is a conversion.

Triggering file download events via Google Tag Manager

It may be that the event is not triggered properly depending on how it’s coded or if you use a CMS.

You’ll have to create a Google Tag Manager trigger in such cases. You must first have an Tag manager account linked to your GA4.

You will configure the parameters necessary to track the downloads of files on our website.

You can, for example, do this in the image below:

A custom trigger: If the previous method does not work, you’ll create a customized event based on Web insights. You can, for example:

Finally, create the tag with the necessary parameters, either based on your own judgment or following GA4’s <a href="https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/9216061? Create the tag with the necessary parameters, either based on your own judgment or following GA4's a href="https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/9216061?

Analyze and confirm that the event has been correctly triggered once the tag has been created.

This ensures the event tracking works as expected and that data is recorded accurately.

The parameters that are associated with an event will give you additional information on how users interact with a website via these events. This helps you gain insight into user engagement and behavior.

Each time you add events to Google Tag Manager you need to add them into GA4 via the admin > Custom Definitions section.

Video reproductions

Want to track the interactions with videos on your site? Video engagement is a measurement event that can be used to track video interactions.

This event has been activated in phases.

• video_start : When the video begins playing.
• video_progress : The video will progress beyond 10%, 25% 50% and 75% duration.
• video_complete : After the video has ended.

Check if Enhanced measurementis enabled. Then, ensure that Video engagementevents are enabled.

The next step is to verify that the video engagement event has been properly tracked and recorded.

If the conversion works, you can activate it.

If the data isn’t collected correctly, then you will need to use Google Tag Manager.

Submission of Form

To measure form submissions such as requests for quotes or more information, you can use the enhanced measurement event form_submit.

Check Enhanced Measurement to see if Form Interactions has been enabled.

You can configure the conversion if it’s being registered properly via DebugView.

Submit form via Google Tag Manager

You can use Google Tag Manager to set up the event if it is not being triggered.

To collect data, you must activate all variables.

Create a trigger that is general for all forms within GTM. You can create tags and triggers for all forms, or just specific forms.

A trigger configuration example for a form on the contact page:

Create a tag with your desired parameters, or any other information you feel is appropriate.

Verify that the event has been triggered.

Lead generation by phone and email

It is important for a B2B business to track leads generated by calls, emails or newsletter subscription forms.

GA4 doesn’t define these events automatically. Below are two ways you can monitor the interactions on your site.

Lead as a recommended event

The event can be used to collect interactions, such as subscriptions to newsletter forms.

In this case, Google Tag Manager is the fastest way to trigger it.

You must first create the trigger. When a user signs up for a newsletter, you can use this trigger.

Then generate the tag, and verify that it works:

Check with DebugView if it’s activated, and mark it as a convert. This option may not appear for a few days.

Leads for custom events

But suppose that you do not want to include calls, emails, or any other form of information request in the same group as subscriptions. This can be achieved by using custom events.

It’s best to name the event similarly to other events in order to simplify data analysis. The event could, for example, be named call_phone when you click on a telephone to make a call.

You can create the event using Google Tag Manager by following the same steps as for generate_lead.

Create the trigger first.

The tag will be displayed:

How can I visualize data?

It’s important to collect key metrics on B2B sites, but also to be able visualize them quickly.

You can create custom reports in the GA4 Exploration section or go to Reports -> Engagement > Conversions.

Looker Studio allows for easy integration with GA4 and can be used to create these reports.

You can then create dynamic reports based on all the events and conversions that you have set up.

GA4 B2B: Focus on what’s important to you

GA4 offers a large amount of data. Determining the metrics that are most relevant to your business is important.

You can then track your KPIs efficiently and analyse the performance of your business.

The post GA4 B2B: Tracking events and conversions first appeared on Search Engine land.