GA4 Analytics Setup and Consent-Aware Tracking

GA4 is Google's free analytics tool. It records visitor actions as events: a page view, a tap on the phone number, a submitted form, a completed purchase. Google Tag Manager (GTM) is a container for the small tracking snippets, called tags, so they can be changed without editing your website's code.

Setup means deciding which actions count, naming them consistently, marking the important ones as conversions, filtering out your own team's visits, and checking that each event fires once and only once.

Because tracking breaks quietly. A redesign removes a tag. A second agency adds its own. The consent banner blocks some tags and not others. Within a year, the report says one thing, the inbox says another, and decisions get made on gut feel again.

A written tracking plan is the fix. It lists each event, what starts it, what information it carries and why the business wants it. Everything else follows from that document.

We check what is tracking today and talk to the people who use the numbers, because the real question is what decisions the data should support. Then we write the tracking plan and the consent approach, and agree both with you before anything is configured.

We build the GTM container and GA4 settings, connect the events and test each one on a private test copy of your site and on the live site. At launch we compare the numbers against what you know to be true, such as form submissions against emails received, and fix the gaps.

People increasingly expect a choice about being tracked. A consent banner records that choice, and Consent Mode lets Google's tags respect it. We default to the cautious setting: nothing non-essential loads until the visitor agrees. What the law requires of you is a question for counsel. We make sure the technical side does what your policy says, as part of our DPDP Act work.

• Secure by default: account access is limited to named people, and personal details such as emails or phone numbers are kept out of analytics.
• Built to scale: the tracking plan and naming are set up so new pages, campaigns or an app can be added without starting over.
• Tested before it ships: every event is fired and checked, and recorded in a test log you keep.
• Looked after after launch: sites change and tracking breaks quietly, so a periodic check keeps the numbers reliable, and it can sit inside a Care Retainer.
• Small changes handled, not invoiced: tracking a new button or fixing a tag after a site change gets done, not quoted.
• Honest advice: if your traffic is very small, a few conversations with customers will tell you more than detailed tracking, and we will say so.

If the real gap is in how enquiries are followed up, better analytics will not close it, and we will point that out. If you want visitors tracked without their knowledge, we decline.

Trusted numbers make everything else measurable. Leadership sees them on business dashboards. They show what technical SEO and local SEO work changed, and which pages of an online store lose buyers. For a quick first look at your site's basics, try the free health check. One team sets up the tracking and the work it measures.

Tell us about your site and what you need to measure. You can also read about our wider Data & Analytics work.