Plenty of GA4 properties are created in a hurry: someone pastes the tag into the site, ticks the defaults and moves on. The reports fill up, so it looks as if everything works. Then the owner asks a simple question, such as how many enquiries came from Google Ads last month, and the property cannot answer it. This service is narrow on purpose. It covers Google Analytics 4 alone, either set up properly from the start or audited and repaired, so the numbers in it match how your business actually makes money.
What changes when GA4 is set up properly
Google Analytics 4 records events: a page view, a scroll, a click, a form sent, a purchase. Out of the box it records a handful of generic ones. It does not know that a quote request is worth more to you than a newsletter sign-up, or that a phone tap from a mobile visitor is often your best lead.
Once the property is configured around your business, three things change. You can see which channels bring people who go on to enquire or buy, not just people who visit. Your Google Ads account can bid against real outcomes, because the same actions are shared with it. And the data is collected lawfully for UK visitors, so you are not building reports on tracking that should not have fired.
Who this suits, and who it does not
It suits UK small and medium businesses in one of two positions: a new website that needs GA4 before launch, or an existing property nobody trusts. Typical signs of the second are enquiry numbers that never match the inbox, a sudden drop after a cookie banner went live, or reports full of traffic from your own payment provider.
It is not the right fit if you need every platform measured together, with Google Ads and Meta conversions, CRM outcomes and a Tag Manager rebuild in one project. That is a wider tracking engagement, and I would scope it as one rather than stretch this service to cover it. It also does not suit sites with a few dozen visits a month, where a simple, privacy-friendly counter will tell you as much.
What a GA4 setup includes
Property settings that are hard to change later
I set the reporting time zone to London and the currency to pounds sterling before any data arrives, because changing them later leaves a split in your history. I also extend data retention from the default two months to the longest period a standard property allows, so explorations can look back over a full year. Then I exclude your own office and home connections with an internal traffic filter, and switch on the data redaction settings that strip email addresses out of page URLs.
Consent first: the banner and Consent Mode v2
Under PECR, cookies that are not strictly necessary need the visitor’s agreement, and the ICO treats analytics cookies as non-essential. The Data (Use and Access) Act 2025 creates an exemption for some analytics cookies, but it comes with conditions, and whether a particular setup can rely on it needs checking case by case. Unless it clearly applies to yours, I treat GA4 as needing consent.
In practice that means a consent management platform that offers a genuine choice, with GA4 loading only after the visitor accepts analytics. I connect the banner to Google’s Consent Mode, version 2, which passes the four consent signals Google now expects for UK and EEA visitors. Without those signals, Google Ads loses access to remarketing audiences and personalised advertising features. My default is basic mode, where Google tags stay silent until consent is given. Advanced mode sends cookieless signals before consent so Google can model the gap; if you want it, I explain the trade-off and the decision sits with you and your data protection adviser.
Events and key events that reflect your business
I start with a short measurement plan: the handful of actions that matter, what counts as a success for each, and where it can be confirmed. For a service business that is usually enquiry forms, phone taps, email clicks and booking confirmations. For a shop it is the ecommerce events from viewing a product through to purchase, with order value in pounds. The actions that represent real business outcomes become key events, the name GA4 now uses for what it used to call conversions. Everything else stays an ordinary event, so your key event count is not padded with scrolls and video plays.
Connections to Google Ads and Search Console
I link GA4 to Google Ads and Search Console where you use them, check the link permissions, and agree with you which key events should be imported into Google Ads, if any, so the account is not counting the same enquiry twice through two routes.
What a GA4 audit checks
If you already have a property, I review it before touching anything. The audit looks at:
- Whether the tag fires once per page, on every page, and only after consent.
- Whether key events record real completions, or count attempts, duplicates and page reloads.
- Property settings: time zone, currency, retention, internal traffic, redaction and Google Signals.
- Payment providers and booking systems that reset sessions, which GA4 fixes through its list of unwanted referrals, sometimes called referral exclusion.
- Campaign tagging, and how much traffic lands in Unassigned or Direct because links were tagged inconsistently.
- Personal data leaking into URLs or event parameters, which breaches Google’s terms.
- Who has access, and whether the business, not a former supplier, owns the account.
How I run the work
- Access and a short call. You give me access to GA4, the website and, if used, Google Ads. We agree which actions count as a lead or a sale.
- Audit or measurement plan. For an existing property I document what is wrong and in what order I would fix it. For a new one I write the plan of events and key events.
- Build or repair. I make the changes, ideally in a staging copy of your site first, and keep a log of each one.
- Test. I send real test submissions and purchases through the site, accepting and refusing consent, and watch each event arrive in DebugView with the right parameters.
- Handover. I walk you through the reports that answer your questions. Any later check of the numbers, once real data has built up, is agreed before work starts.
GA4 problems I see most often on UK sites
Thank-you pages counted as enquiries. If the confirmation page can be reached by refreshing it or from a bookmark, every visit becomes a lead. I tie the key event to the actual successful submission instead.
The built-in form tracking switched on. GA4’s enhanced measurement can record form interactions, but on many sites it counts people who start a form or hit an error. I usually turn it off and track confirmed submissions.
Tags firing before consent. A banner that looks compliant while GA4 loads underneath it is common, often because the tag was hard-coded in the theme and the banner was added later.
Duplicate tags. One copy in the theme, one from a plugin and one in Tag Manager means every page view is counted two or three times.
Untagged or inconsistently tagged campaigns. Emails and social posts sent without UTM parameters, or with mixed spellings, end up in the wrong channel. A shared UTM link builder and a naming rule fix most of it.
Expecting GA4 to agree with ad platforms. It will not, because each platform counts and attributes differently. I explain why GA4 and Facebook report different numbers so you know which figure to use for which decision.
What you receive
- A GA4 property owned by your business, configured and tested.
- A written measurement plan listing every event and key event, what triggers it and why it exists.
- For audits, a ranked list of problems found, with what I fixed and what still needs your developer.
- A change log, so the next person who works on the property knows what was done.
- A walkthrough of the reports you will use most.
What it costs
The cost depends mainly on the number of key events, whether the site has ecommerce, how many domains a visitor crosses before converting, and whether consent needs to be fixed at the same time. I write a quote in GBP after a first look at your property, and we agree it in writing before any work starts.
Next step
If you want to check where you stand first, my guide on testing whether your conversion tracking works walks you through the checks step by step. If you would rather hand it over, get in touch with your website address, the platform it runs on and the actions you count as a lead or a sale. I will tell you whether you need a full setup, an audit or only a few targeted fixes.
If you are not sure whether your tracking needs work at all, start with a free tracking audit.