Thanks hun! Over and over we have to change our settings for ALL our clients in GA4...lol, in the 10+ years working with Google, I must say I even feel sorry for the Tech Team from Google helping us. These tips are duly noted and appreciated.
Your videos have been so helpful in getting me up to speed for prepping a website to move to GA4. But also - "instead trying again to keep looking for some shortcuts in the migration, you should reevaluate what is necessary and what is valuable and then decide what do you want to migrate." "It is not an easy task. But it is the right moment to do the right thing and win in the long run." That's life advice right there.
You should be managing your form submissions through a CRM integrated into your website. Analytics on form submissions would be nice, but aren’t completely necessary. Just my opinion.
2 года назад+1
You"re right. I always disable the form_submission event. It doesn't working properly
the fact that google was charging me for all these misfire because of their update is the reason I shut everything down. once i get over my frustration and hopefully when the update stabilizes, I’ll be back
GA4 tracks our cookie consent banner as from submissions :D Just because in HTML of our cookie solution (we use a 3rd party) that is indeed a form element. This however does not make it in any way useful.
Quick question for clarification: around minute 3:24, you advise to have the toggle for "Collect Universal Analytics events" in the off position (which I do), then around minute 7:55 after you set up the new GA4 property and go to the GA4 set-up assistant, there is a message at the top that reads "This is your new GA4 property. Your connected Universal Analytics property remains unchanged" (I have this message in my GA4 as well); please confirm that having both messages is the correct set-up.
Hi Julius, always great to see your videos! TBH I'm not sure I agree with the 2nd point because sometimes my clients do not know exactly what they (or their consultants) have done in the past. Therefore, I prefer to collect Universal Analytics events for some days just to see if some of them are actually still useful and can be migrated correctly to GA4 with its own code. What do you think?
Form interaction setting does exactly what it's supposed to do: capture form interaction events. Including the incompleted / error submissions. By disabling this setting you loose valuable information because you can't compare the total number of form interactions ( = attempts) with the completed form interactions anymore.
No. So you will have number of form starts (which is ok) and then the number of form submits which includes completed and error submissions. If a form has no thank you page, how are you going to know the actual number of *correct* submissions (after looking at the GA reportd)? There is no way to distinguish that,unless you properly implement form tracking (e.g. With GTM).
by implementing form submission events through gtm you can also add in parameters as to why a submission failed. maybe you can include a parameter for an ajax response or parameters for the fields and know which field was missed. by using auto-collect you might be able to compare successful completions in your internal data with attempts in GA, but you would never know why those submissions failed (so you'd have a useless metric).
Julius - Great tutorial, as always! In the third example, you point out that regex goals cannot be imported. There is a complicated post by OptimizeSmart about regex goals in GA4, but I'd like to know if you have a video tutorial on this topic. Thanks!
I don’t understand why you are equating the form_submit event with a form’s being ‘successfully’ submitted. I would expect that if I submit a form (regardless of whether it’s missing a required field), I would see in the GA telemetry that the submit occurred.
thank you for the video Julius! What is your opinion about the modifying and creating events directly through the GA4 "Admin > Property > Events" menu?
In Manage automatic event detection within the Configure Tag Settings, should we disable the form interaction there as well as the enhanced measurement? I noticed when I disabled it in the Enhanced Measurement it was still enabled in the Google Tag settings.
That's how it is supposed to be. The settings in the "Enhanced measurement" control what is recorded from the stream in this particular GA4 property, while the tag settings control what info could be collected by the tag in general. If you disable form tracking in the tag settings, that would mean that the form tracking would always be disabled from this tag, irrespective of what GA4 property you connect it to. Hence if you disable form tracking in the tag settings and then connect that tag as a stream to multiple GA4 properties none of them will have form tracking even if form tracking is enabled in the "Enhanced measurement" control of those properties.
Hi Julius, what about the outbound click in enhanced measurement? When doing testing, I've noticed that the click event will sometimes fire upon phone and mailto clicks.
I feel like understanding how many forms were started without completion is a good thing. And you can add conditions to improve submission accuracy no?
Thanks hun! Over and over we have to change our settings for ALL our clients in GA4...lol, in the 10+ years working with Google, I must say I even feel sorry for the Tech Team from Google helping us. These tips are duly noted and appreciated.
Your videos have been so helpful in getting me up to speed for prepping a website to move to GA4. But also - "instead trying again to keep looking for some shortcuts in the migration, you should reevaluate what is necessary and what is valuable and then decide what do you want to migrate." "It is not an easy task. But it is the right moment to do the right thing and win in the long run." That's life advice right there.
SUPER enlightening video, Julius!!! Thanks so much for sharing! - Randy Floyd, Sr. Analytics Engineer
Omg, the automatic form tracking has been driving me nuts because it's never accurate and now I know why! Thank you!
it sucks that form submission, the number one tool to create leads is broken 😠
You should be managing your form submissions through a CRM integrated into your website. Analytics on form submissions would be nice, but aren’t completely necessary. Just my opinion.
You"re right. I always disable the form_submission event. It doesn't working properly
the fact that google was charging me for all these misfire because of their update is the reason I shut everything down. once i get over my frustration and hopefully when the update stabilizes, I’ll be back
GA4 tracks our cookie consent banner as from submissions :D Just because in HTML of our cookie solution (we use a 3rd party) that is indeed a form element. This however does not make it in any way useful.
Quick question for clarification: around minute 3:24, you advise to have the toggle for "Collect Universal Analytics events" in the off position (which I do), then around minute 7:55 after you set up the new GA4 property and go to the GA4 set-up assistant, there is a message at the top that reads "This is your new GA4 property. Your connected Universal Analytics property remains unchanged" (I have this message in my GA4 as well); please confirm that having both messages is the correct set-up.
I confirm
Hi Julius, always great to see your videos!
TBH I'm not sure I agree with the 2nd point because sometimes my clients do not know exactly what they (or their consultants) have done in the past.
Therefore, I prefer to collect Universal Analytics events for some days just to see if some of them are actually still useful and can be migrated correctly to GA4 with its own code.
What do you think?
Form interaction setting does exactly what it's supposed to do: capture form interaction events. Including the incompleted / error submissions. By disabling this setting you loose valuable information because you can't compare the total number of form interactions ( = attempts) with the completed form interactions anymore.
No. So you will have number of form starts (which is ok) and then the number of form submits which includes completed and error submissions. If a form has no thank you page, how are you going to know the actual number of *correct* submissions (after looking at the GA reportd)? There is no way to distinguish that,unless you properly implement form tracking (e.g. With GTM).
by implementing form submission events through gtm you can also add in parameters as to why a submission failed. maybe you can include a parameter for an ajax response or parameters for the fields and know which field was missed. by using auto-collect you might be able to compare successful completions in your internal data with attempts in GA, but you would never know why those submissions failed (so you'd have a useless metric).
Julius - Great tutorial, as always! In the third example, you point out that regex goals cannot be imported. There is a complicated post by OptimizeSmart about regex goals in GA4, but I'd like to know if you have a video tutorial on this topic. Thanks!
if a DEBUG VIEW is not working, is not having to purchase the workspace subscription can possibly be the cause ?thanks
I don’t understand why you are equating the form_submit event with a form’s being ‘successfully’ submitted. I would expect that if I submit a form (regardless of whether it’s missing a required field), I would see in the GA telemetry that the submit occurred.
Thanks Julius 👍
Which three? Not added to descriptions and the video isn't chaptered to help me find them. Usability could be easily enhanced here :)
thank you for the video Julius! What is your opinion about the modifying and creating events directly through the GA4 "Admin > Property > Events" menu?
It's better than habving nothing. But I prefer editing/managing events in GTM
In Manage automatic event detection within the Configure Tag Settings, should we disable the form interaction there as well as the enhanced measurement? I noticed when I disabled it in the Enhanced Measurement it was still enabled in the Google Tag settings.
That's how it is supposed to be. The settings in the "Enhanced measurement" control what is recorded from the stream in this particular GA4 property, while the tag settings control what info could be collected by the tag in general.
If you disable form tracking in the tag settings, that would mean that the form tracking would always be disabled from this tag, irrespective of what GA4 property you connect it to. Hence if you disable form tracking in the tag settings and then connect that tag as a stream to multiple GA4 properties none of them will have form tracking even if form tracking is enabled in the "Enhanced measurement" control of those properties.
Thanks a lot for this video.
Why Dont you disable submit button using front end validation and allow form submition when all fields are validated
Can you expound on this?
Turned it on to see how it does and it tracked a form submission on every single page thanks to the Facebook Pixel
I've noticed that sometimes form_submit is triggered by all sort of things, even Facebook Pixel events! Totally useless
Hi Julius, what about the outbound click in enhanced measurement? When doing testing, I've noticed that the click event will sometimes fire upon phone and mailto clicks.
Yeah, that is a good call too. I could have included that too in this list. But it is not as bad as other things I mentioned in this video.
@@AnalyticsMania agreed! thanks for the quick response.
I feel like understanding how many forms were started without completion is a good thing.
And you can add conditions to improve submission accuracy no?
No
Hi, Julius.
how to unfollow google bots ?
Define internal traffic?
I was expecting to see Google Signals as the first not-recommended feature :D
Thanks Julius 👍