Multi-Step Form Tracking in GA4

Google Analytics 4 is (and will be) a vigorous tool for getting powerful data points to map out the most intricate customer journey. And a website marketing funnel isn’t complete without (at least) one form that leads a step closer to a conversion.

We must set up form tracking and form submission events very precisely. GA4 offers multiple ways to do so. Follow along if you’re searching for how to correctly track forms in your Google Analytics account.

But first of all…

Why track form conversion data?

Forms can be a part of the any phase of the funnel. As such, a successful form submission brings both actionable inputs and revenue down the line. But, for it to be successful, we must track forms.

Google Analytics form tracking enables you to:

• Monitor form views and understand which forms are seen most frequently
• Find out which forms get the most submissions
• Know the form conversion rates (number of successful submission)
• Improve the forms that don’t convert as much
• Find out how users found your website and
• On which pages they were when they submitted the form.

Why Custom Form Tracking?

You can set up form submission tracking in Google Analytics pretty easily, but for this example you will need Google Tag Manager as well.

Do you have an event tracking strategy with an accent on the custom event type?

Just as a reminder. GA4 offers multiple ways for specialists to track events. They are the following:

• Automatically collected events
• Enhanced Measurement events
• Recommended events
• Custom events

There is the option of form tracking in Recommended events and we’ve written all about it here. Check that out if you’re interested to track a form through that type of event. But this time, we want to track form submissions through a custom event.

The reason is depth of data and insight.

Multi-Step Form Tracking

For every business operating online, it’s vital to track conversions with a well-thought-out event setup. Basic analytics configuration won’t cut it with multi-step form tracking. It can easily miss important form data and hinder your ability to make informed decisions.

Custom form tracking gets the most out of Google Analytics 4. We’re gonna show you how.

How to Set Up Google Analytics Form Tracking

A slightly finer event setup is to send data to Google Analytics 4 once the user starts to fill out the form, completes the first step, or opens the popup where the form is. A crucial thing for this tracking method is using Google Tag Manager to do tag configuration and manage tags.

This way of form tracking is infinitely better than just having information about submitted forms. Because, with multi-step form submission tracking, you can see the ratio between started and completed forms. 

Even if everything is correctly set, naturally the discrepancy between the start and end might be quite significant. So the next logical question should be : At what point is my user dropping off?

We wouldn’t have a successful submission tracking if we didn’t know this descrepancy. Now you can take complete advantage of Google Tag Manager & Google Analytics 4 events. 

By tracking froms with each step and sending the events to GA4, you can create form analytics reports in GA4 and form new hypotheses about your funnel. These report will serve you a great purpose as you can get an insight into the customer journey from opening up the form to completing it.

Now you can see how many users have completed each of the steps and what are the potential bottlenecks of form submission. You can easily know where users decide not to continue with the form submission, and you can learn more about your users and adapt your funnel. 

Multi-Step Form Tracking: Client Use Case Scenario

We have a client’s website with a multi-step form consisting of 8 steps from beginning to complete submission. So, we decided to send an event to Google Analytics 4 and Universal Analytics after each step. 

For this form tracking, we were lucky to work with great developers who added attributes to the fields on the website per our request, so we’re only using one trigger for all of the steps:

Then, we’re using a RegEx Table variable to determine the names of the steps of the form based on those fields:

Combining the two pieces of information, we are sending the events and values (most of them, except PII) to Google Analytics 4: 

After testing everything in DebugView and submitting the updated version in Google Tag Manager, events start arriving in your Google Analytics account!

It wasn’t hard to track form submissions. Now, we had to wait for events to accumulate. Now, we see a bunch of events in our events report.

If you’re wondering how we make sense of those numbers… You may have guessed it – custom reporting.

By taking advantage of Google Analytics 4 explorations, we’ve picked the most suitable report for this type of tracking, and that is Funnel exploration in this case.

With some adjustments, the final (base) report looks like this:

With this base report, we can get deeper and deeper into form data by crossing it with segments, other dimensions, etc.

Just by looking at the form data visualization, you can see where the biggest drop-offs are and act accordingly – discuss what would cause the drop-off and suggest a tweak in the form to the team. 

Does Google Analytics collect form data?

More data doesn’t always mean better data, but if it’s tracked correctly, the more the merrier!

The biggest weakness of standard form tracking is that it is often basic and minimal. The usual setup only has one form trigger. It’s the event that is triggered after the form submission. We never recommend tracking just one event in any type of form – because it gives insufficient and inaccurate data.

One event form submission data only gives you the number of submitted forms and has no deeper insight into what your potential leads are doing before they’ve submitted it. Less form trigger, less data.

That is why we recommend revisiting your trigger configuration and your entire custom events collection strategy.

Experiment with Google Analytics Form Tracking

As Google Analytics consultants, your team can adjust the form tracking, collect more quality data and create astonishing reports that only Google Analytics 4 has. See what kind of reports are new with GA4.

If you have a similar form, this would be a way to go! Again, there are multiple ways to set up custom event for tracking forms, this is just one way of doing it.

We encourage you to spend more time in Google Analytics 4, get acustomed to changes from Universal Analytics and come up with unique ways to collect data. Follow our extensive blogs parallely for a smoother process.

Are there any other methods we could do a step by step tutorial for? Let us know.

Bottom Line: Custom Tracking Form Submissions

However you track form sumission with a custom event, one thing is certain: you’ll have all the data you need for a much deeper analysis of web traffic. And it’s up to you to make sense of it, come up with theories, test them and measure the results.

You’re back to square one, with much greater knowledge and insight.

Free Google Analytics 4 Ebook

Did you know that we’ve published an entire 100-page about Google Analytics 4? It’s completely free and full of valuable tips, tricks, and best practices for using GA4. This ebook teaches you how to avoid mistakes, misinterpretations, and confusion when setting up Google Tag Manager, events, reports, and everything GA4. Get your copy and share with your GA4 support team, collegues and friends.

• Share:
• 
•