Tag Archive for: website development

An image of a Google Analytics 4 dashboard.

Why You Should Utilize GA4 Custom Events

/in

We’re all familiar with Google Analytics 4 in the digital marketing space (or at least you should be). Most of the time, whatever user interaction information and data you’re looking for is part of one of the different types of events: automatically collected events, enhanced measurement events, or recommended events. You can then track the results found in these events in GA4 reports.

However, sometimes you need additional information not typically collected by GA4. Much like in the former Google Analytics version, Universal Analytics, you can set up custom events for the instances that do not already get tracked.

What Are Custom Events?

Custom events track valuable information about your website that Google Analytics 4 does not automatically track by itself. You can create a custom event directly in Google Analytics 4 or use Google Tag Manager (GTM); which one you need to use depends on the specifics of the custom event.

Benefits of Custom Event Tracking

Google sorts which events wind up in which category by how commonly they appear on websites. For example, every website has at least one webpage, so the page_view event appears in automatically collected events. Recommended events contain many different tracking metrics depending on what type of website you have.

GA4 automatically tracks link clicks, file downloads, and button clicks because of their commonality. However, out-of-the-ordinary metrics need custom events.

Custom events exist so you can still track anything you want to track, even if it does not fit in any existing events. This gives you a great amount of freedom, and the ability to collect data on any aspect of your website that you want, which you can then view as a part of GA4 reports.

How to Set Up Custom Events Directly in GA4

  1. First, select the event that you want to use as the basis of your new custom event.
  2. Click “Events” under Data Display
  3. Click “Create Event” once again on the next screen
  4. Fill in the Custom Event Name. Note that custom events cannot share their name with an existing GA4 event and cannot exceed 40 characters in length. They can only contain letters, numbers, and underscores, and must start with a letter.
  5. Set up the matching conditions of the custom event. Here, you set up your event parameters and the parameter values.
  6. You can choose to copy the parameters of the original base event if you so desire. If you need to, you can change the parameters to fit your custom event better.
  7. Click the “Create” button.

Now that you have set up your custom event, you need to test it to make sure that it works properly.

How to Test Your Custom Event

    1. Go to your website
    2. In Google Analytics, go to the debug view in GA4’s settings
    3. Here is where you will be able to see a view of the website and make sure that the events are being tracked correctly

How to Create Custom Events With Google Tag Manager

While there is no single definitive step-by-step guide to setting up custom events via GTM due to the vast array of events you can set up with this method, they all share a few common threads regardless.

Here is an example of one way that you can use GTM to set up custom events:

  1. Create a new tag in GTM, and select “GA4 Event” as the tag type.
  2. Name the event, and include optional parameters you need for reporting on the event.
  3. Choose the existing GA4 configuration tag.
  4. Create a trigger that will make the tag go off when the intended action is performed on your website.
  5. Save the new trigger and tag
  6. Make sure to preview changes before publishing the container.

How to Test Custom Events Made in Google Tag Manager

    1. Go into GTM and click “Preview”
    2. Fill in the URL and click “Connect”
    3. In your website, perform the trigger to the event you created.
    4. Open the debug view in GTM to see if your custom event is listed. Make sure to check both the GTM container as well as the GA4 container.
    5. Publish the GTM container to your website.

Custom Definitions

Custom dimensions are very important if you want to send specific parameters that are not dimensions that GA4 collects automatically. For example, if you have content offers on your website and want to highlight downloads, you would want to use custom dimensions.

Limitations

While small in number, and most likely irrelevant, there are some limitations to custom events in GA4 that must be noted. You are limited to a maximum of 50 custom dimensions and metrics, but in most cases this limit will not be something you need to be worried about. They also limit events to 25 parameters per event.

There are limits to the length of naming different aspects of your custom events, as well, such as event names and parameter names, which are both capped at 40 characters.

Key Events

Key Events are events that you can mark in the events tab to “highlight” them. This sets them apart from the rest of the events that you may not watch as closely on a regular basis. Typically, your key events will be form submissions, downloads or purchases, which are more important to measure at a high level.

Ready to Set Up Custom Events?

Now you are ready to set up your own custom events and gain access to all of the data you could possibly need about your website and its users. Now you can take advantage of the power that GA4 gives to business owners, and you can track custom events and work to boost your conversion rates.

We know, this all seems very overwhelming. If you need help with data tracking for your website, we at iSynergy can help! Reach out to us today, and we can handle all of your digital marketing needs.

A FAQ page, one of the major website needs for small businesses.

9 Website Needs That You Should Know

/in

Creating a great website for your business involves many crucial components. Building a site that is simple, clear, concise, and still includes everything you need to attract potential customers isn’t easy. Web design comes with many moving parts (much more than just choosing fonts), and it can be hard to keep track of it all. Luckily, we have compiled a list of some of the most important things you need for your company website.

  1. Choose the Right CMS

A content management system (CMS) allows you to build your website without needing extensive knowledge on programming and HTML. Building a webpage from scratch requires coding in HTML, which is time-consuming and difficult even for an experienced web developer. It also makes edits and updates a troublesome task.

With a CMS, the level of technical knowledge you need depends on the building software. With all of its capabilities, WordPress can be more difficult for beginners to grasp, whereas Squarespace is more beginner-friendly.

Many CMS softwares offer plugins that can enhance their capabilities, along with high-quality templates if you’re struggling to get started. These can be particularly useful when building an ecommerce website.

  1. Domain and SSL Certificate

There are several different ways to obtain your domain name. You have the option to purchase and register your domain name from a registrar such as Google Domains, which is usually a low-cost option.

Some CMS softwares offer a free domain as a part of your account’s plan, or a domain may be included in your web hosting plan. The easiest way is to obtain your domain from your CMS so you do not need to go through extra steps to connect your domain to the CMS. However, if this option is not available, the process of connecting your domain to your CMS should not cause too much trouble or confusion.

Once you have obtained your domain, obtain a Secure Socket Layer (SSL) certificate. This is what tells search engines and users that your website is secure. You know a website has an SSL certificate if its URL begins with “https://” instead of “http://”.

  1. Web Hosting Service

In order for your website to be live and available to site visitors, you need a web hosting service. Some CMS softwares such as Squarespace include web hosting services in your plan, but others like WordPress require you to obtain hosting services elsewhere.

Examples of hosting services include Bluehost and DreamHost. Bluehost is designed for hosting WordPress websites since it does not offer its own hosting directly.

  1. Data and Analytics Tracking

As a part of your overall digital marketing strategy, you need to collect data from your website. Data and analytics are necessary for making informed decisions on where to take your digital strategy in the future.

Whether you are a small business owner or involved with a much larger company, analytics are vital to your success. The most commonly used analytics tracking tool is Google Analytics, but search engine optimization (SEO) tools such as SEMRush are also very helpful.

The insights these tools provide, such as website traffic, impressions, clicks, conversions, total keywords, etc., are crucial for knowing if your website and overall strategy are effective, and if you need to make changes.

  1. SEO Strategy

In order to have direction when developing your website, you need to define your SEO strategy. Determine which keywords you intend to try to rank for and understand how to utilize user experience and internal linking structure.

Your SEO strategy affects your website in many ways, making it very important to develop for your website to be successful. You need a good SEO strategy if you want your website to rank highly in search engines and drive more traffic to your website.

  1. Proper Heading Structure

Heading structure is important, not only for your website’s users but also for search engines to crawl your web pages. Whether it’s a homepage, services page, contact page, landing page, about us page, or any other webpage on your site, you need a good heading structure.

Your headers guide users and search engine crawlers through your content and help them understand the purpose of the webpage. To do this well, you need to use headers wisely.

Heading structure should function similarly to an outline. The H1 on your webpage should be the page’s main idea and set the theme for the page. Following the body text under your H1, you should use H2s. Do not skip H2s and use H3s or H4s, as this will make your page harder to follow.

  1. Call-to-Action (CTAs)

CTAs are your way of directing users to take desired actions, helping to turn clicks into conversions. Whether you are trying to make a sale, get newsletter subscribers, or fill out a contact form, your CTAs need to be clear and direct to be effective.

On your website, you have primary and secondary CTAs. Primary CTAs are prioritized and focus on your main objective, while secondary CTAs provide another conversion opportunity for users who don’t meet the primary objective.

  1. Integrated Email Marketing

For email marketing, many people manually collect contact information brought in by contact forms and import them to their email marketing platform. Instead of this, some platforms allow for integration directly into your website.

When contact forms are filled out, they are automatically imported into your platform and become part of your email list. This is a huge time saver and helps make your website and email marketing strategy more seamless and effective.

  1. Responsive Design

In order for your website to be user-friendly, you need to use responsive design. Responsive design refers to the website’s ability to adapt to the size of the screen that is being used to view it.

Responsive design is especially important for users on mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets. The majority of all searches on the internet are performed on mobile devices, so if your website is not mobile-friendly, you could be missing out on a massive amount of traffic.

Still Need Help With Your Website?

Make no mistake, there is still a lot more that goes into website building than just 9 things. If we took the time to list everything you need to know, this would have been much too long. If you are still struggling and don’t know where to start with your business’ website, now is the time to reach out to us at iSynergy! We can help you out with any of your digital marketing and website needs.

7 Times That You Should Hire an SEO Agency for Your Small Business

/in

Many small business owners, when they first start out, learn how to do everything from bookkeeping to public relations, on their own. SEO is one of the hats that entrepreneurs wear in the beginning. It’s possible for just about anyone to perform a few basic SEO moves well enough to optimize the company website on their own. At some point, however, business owners need to think about finding a good SEO agency to take better care of their optimization. How do you know that it’s time to call in the professionals? The answer is, you look for a few signs.

Read more