Analytics & Tracking

I primarily work with Google Analytics 4 (GA4) and Google Tag Manager (GTM) as the foundation. GTM acts as the container that manages all your tracking tags in one place — which means adding or modifying tracking doesn't require touching your site's code. Depending on your needs, I also integrate Google Search Console, Meta Pixel (for Facebook/Instagram ad tracking), LinkedIn Insight Tag, Microsoft Clarity for heatmaps and session recordings, and platform-specific conversion tracking for Google Ads, Bing Ads, or whatever advertising platforms you're running. Everything is configured to work together so your data is consistent across platforms.

Having the GA4 tracking code on your site is step one. But most businesses stop there, which means they're collecting pageview data and not much else. The real value comes from configuring the events and conversions that connect to your actual business metrics — form submissions, phone calls, downloads, video views, scroll depth, button clicks, purchases, and whatever else matters for your specific goals. Beyond event tracking, there's also proper cross-domain tracking if you use multiple domains, filtered views to exclude internal traffic and bots, audience segments that reflect your real customer groups, and UTM parameter strategy so your campaign data is clean and actionable. Most GA4 installations I audit are collecting data but not the right data.

Pageviews tell you someone showed up. Conversion tracking tells you what they did after they arrived — whether they submitted a contact form, called your phone number, downloaded a resource, signed up for a newsletter, added a product to their cart, or completed a purchase. One measures presence, the other measures action. Without conversion tracking, you know how many people visited your site but you have no idea which traffic sources, pages, or campaigns are actually generating business. That means you can't make informed decisions about where to spend your marketing budget. Conversion tracking turns your analytics from a traffic counter into a decision-making tool.

Yes. I can set up custom dashboards in GA4 or build dedicated reporting dashboards in Looker Studio (formerly Google Data Studio) that pull data from multiple sources — analytics, Search Console, ad platforms — into one view. The goal is a report you'll actually look at and understand, not a 40-page document full of vanity metrics nobody reads. I design dashboards around the specific questions you need answered: Where are my leads coming from? Which pages are converting? Is my ad spend producing a return? How's organic traffic trending? If you need regular reporting, I can set up automated email reports on whatever cadence makes sense.

A straightforward setup — GA4, GTM, event tracking for forms and phone calls, Search Console integration, and basic conversion goals — typically takes 1 to 2 weeks, including configuration, testing, and documentation. More complex setups involving eCommerce tracking, multiple domains, custom data layers, ad platform integration across several channels, or advanced event tracking with user properties and audiences may take longer. I also build in a testing period to verify that all events are firing correctly and data is flowing accurately before considering the setup complete.

Yes — this is where most analytics setups fall short. Installation without interpretation is just numbers on a screen. After setup, I walk you through what you're looking at, what the key metrics mean in the context of your business, and what actions to take based on what the data is telling you. For ongoing clients, I provide regular data reviews — either as part of a maintenance plan or as standalone analytics consulting — where we look at trends, identify opportunities, diagnose drops, and adjust strategy based on what the numbers actually show. The goal is that you understand your data well enough to make confident business decisions from it.