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Conversions

Conversion Tracking for Beginners: How to Count Results, Not Just Visits

Moonlit team6 min read

Short answer

A conversion is a visit that turns into something useful, like a sent form, a call, a booking or a sale. In GA4 you track one by marking an event as a key event, such as the form_submit event GA4 can already collect. Then send a test form and watch it arrive in DebugView.

  • Pick one or two actions that actually bring in money.
  • Visit counts can't tell you which page or ad earns its keep.
  • A thank-you page makes the cleanest thing to count.
  • Never trust a key event until you've watched a test one arrive.
On this page
  1. What Counts as a Conversion?
  2. Why Visits Alone Can Fool You
  3. Step 0: Check Whether GA4 Is on Your Site
  4. Step 1: Let GA4 See Your Form
  5. Step 2: Mark It as a Key Event
  6. Better: Count Your Thank-You Page
  7. What About Calls, Bookings and Sales?
  8. Step 3: Test That It Worked
  9. Running Google Ads? One More Step
  10. Frequently Asked Questions
  11. Sources

Visits are nice. Calls, bookings and sales pay the bills. Conversion tracking is how you count the second kind.

Three cards in a row joined by arrows. Step 1, they arrive: a visit from search, an ad or a post. Step 2, they look around: pages viewed, like services, prices, reviews and contact. Step 3, they act: a conversion, which is a form sent, a call, a booking or a purchase. Below, a grey bar under steps 1 and 2 reads: counting visits only sees this much. A green bar under all three steps reads: conversion tracking counts step 3 as a key event. From a visit to a result 1 · THEY ARRIVE A visit From search, an ad or a post 2 · THEY LOOK AROUND Pages viewed Services, prices, reviews, contact 3 · THEY ACT A conversion Form sent · Call Booking · Purchase Counting visits only sees this much Conversion tracking counts step 3 as a key event

What Counts as a Conversion?

A conversion is any action that means a visitor just became a lead or a customer. For most small businesses, that's one of these:

Pick the one or two that matter most.

Google Analytics 4 (GA4) calls these key events. Google Ads calls them conversions. Same idea, two names.

Why Visits Alone Can Fool You

Traffic tells you people showed up, not whether anyone picked up the phone. A busy page can bring in zero leads, while a quiet page brings in most of them. If you only count visits, you'll polish the wrong page.

Before: counting visits

  • How many people showed up
  • Which pages they looked at
  • Nothing about who became a customer

After: counting results

  • Which pages bring in leads
  • Which ads, emails and posts pay off
  • Whether a website change actually helped

Once you count results, you can check whether a fix really worked instead of guessing.

Step 0: Check Whether GA4 Is on Your Site

This guide uses Google Analytics 4 (GA4), Google's free tool for counting what visitors do. Plenty of sites don't have it yet, so check first.

  1. Open your website, right-click the page and choose View Page Source.
  2. Press Ctrl+F (Cmd+F on a Mac) and search for G-.
  3. If you find a code like G-ABC123XYZ inside a script, GA4 is installed. Skip to Step 1. If you only find one starting with GTM-, the site uses Google Tag Manager, which may load GA4 for you. Ask whoever set it up.

No GA4 yet? Setting it up takes about 15 minutes:

  1. Go to analytics.google.com and click Start measuring.
  2. Create an account and a property (Google's name for one website), and pick your time zone and currency.
  3. Choose Web, enter your site's address and leave Enhanced measurement on.
  4. Copy your Measurement ID. It starts with G-.
  5. Add it to your site. Shopify, Squarespace, Wix and WooCommerce each have a Google Analytics field where you paste the ID. Other sites paste a short code snippet, which GA4 shows under View tag instructions.
  6. Visit your site, then open Reports > Realtime in GA4. You should see yourself within about 30 minutes.

You'll also need Editor access in GA4 (the permission level that lets you change settings) and a form you can send a test through. Already had GA4? Run the 10-minute GA4 sanity check to make sure it's counting right.

Step 1: Let GA4 See Your Form

GA4 has a set of actions it can count with no extra code, called enhanced measurement. Form sends are one of them.

  1. Open your web streamIn GA4, go to Admin > Data collection and modification > Data streams and click your website.
  2. Turn on enhanced measurementMake sure the Enhanced measurement switch is on.
  3. Check form trackingClick the gear icon and make sure Form interactions is on. GA4 then records form_start when someone begins a form and form_submit when they send it.
  4. Send yourself a testFill in your own contact form and send it.

Two catches. form_submit counts every form on your site, so a newsletter sign-up counts the same as a quote request. And if your form is built by another service, like a booking widget, GA4 may not see it at all. The test in Step 3 tells you which situation you're in.

Step 2: Mark It as a Key Event

  1. Go to Admin > Data display > Events.
  2. On the Recent events tab, find form_submit. New events can take a while to show up here.
  3. Click the star next to it.

You should see the star filled in. Reports can take up to 24 hours to show the new key event, and it only counts from today forward.

Better: Count Your Thank-You Page

If your form sends people to a thank-you page after they hit send, count that page instead. Only finished sends land there.

  1. Go to Admin > Data display > Events.
  2. Click Create event, then Create.
  3. In Custom event name, type a short name like quote_request. Use lowercase letters and underscores.
  4. Under Matching conditions, set event_name equals page_view.
  5. Add a second condition: page_location contains thank-you (or whatever your thank-you page's address uses).
  6. Click Create.
  7. Once quote_request shows up on the Recent events tab, click its star to make it a key event.

The new event can take an hour or more to start working, so test it later in the day.

What About Calls, Bookings and Sales?

Step 3: Test That It Worked

Don't skip this. A key event that never fires looks exactly like a slow month.

  1. Turn on debug modeGo to tagassistant.google.com, click Add domain, type your site's address and click Connect. Your site opens in a new tab.
  2. Accept the cookie bannerIf your site asks about cookies, say yes to analytics. Otherwise GA4 won't record your test.
  3. Send a test formIn that new tab, fill in your form and send it.
  4. Open DebugViewIn GA4, go to Admin > Data display > DebugView. It shows your own test visit as it happens.
  5. Find your eventYou should see form_submit (or quote_request) show up once. Click it to see the details.

If it shows up twice, GA4 may be installed twice. If it doesn't show up at all, check that you used the right page name, or that your form isn't a widget GA4 can't see. A tool like Moonlit can also flag tracking that has stopped working.

Running Google Ads? One More Step

Google Ads needs to know which clicks turned into leads, so it can spend your budget on the ones that work. Once your key event is working in GA4, you can turn it into a Google Ads conversion. Link your Google Ads and GA4 accounts first. Then, in Google Ads, go to Goals > Summary and click Create conversion action, choosing your GA4 property and key event. It can take up to 24 hours for data to appear, and older results don't carry over.

Want to Go Deeper?

  • GA4 and Google Tag Manager: Analytics Mania has detailed, step-by-step tutorials, including call and form tracking.
  • Meta (Facebook and Instagram) ads: the KARB AI blog covers Meta conversions, like the Meta Pixel and Conversions API.
  • Want a hand? Contact Moonlit and we'll help you set it up.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is a key event the same as a conversion?

Close enough for everyday use. GA4 calls the actions you care about key events. Google Ads conversions are built from those key events once you link the two accounts.

How many key events should I have?

Just a few. If every click is a key event, the ones that bring in money get lost. Start with your main lead or sale.

Why does GA4 show fewer leads than my inbox?

Some visitors block tracking or turn down cookies, and phone calls or direct emails never touch your website. A small gap is normal. A big gap usually means the key event isn't firing every time.

Sources

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