Google Analytics 4, UTM Tracking and Marketing Metrics | Free Digital Marketing Course: From Beginner to Expert

What you'll learn

How Google Analytics 4 (GA4) measures your site and which reports to check.
How to set up the key events that matter for your business.
How to tag links with UTM parameters so you know where sales come from.
How attribution works in GA4 today and why last click doesn't tell the whole story.
How to pick KPIs for each funnel stage and run a weekly dashboard.

📥 Practice this lesson

Build error-free UTM links with a formula and track your weekly indicators with automatic week-over-week changes.

digital-marketing-template.xlsx · UTM Builder and Weekly Dashboard sheets

Without measurement, marketing is just an opinion. With measurement, every decision rests on data: which channel brings customers, which campaign loses money, which page scares visitors away. In this lesson, which closes Level 2, you'll learn to measure the full journey, from the first click to the sale.

Google Analytics 4 in five minutes

Google Analytics 4 is Google's free tool for measuring what happens on your website or app. You install it with a small tag (or a plugin, or a one-click integration in Shopify, Squarespace or WordPress), and it records everything as events: a page view, a click, a form submission, a purchase.

Concept	What it means
Users	Distinct people (approximate: one customer on two devices can count twice)
Sessions	Visits: a period of activity on your site
Engaged sessions	Sessions that lasted longer than 10 seconds, had a key event, or had two or more page views
Engagement rate	Engaged sessions ÷ sessions. Bounce rate in GA4 is the opposite: the share of sessions that were not engaged
Key events	The actions you mark as important for your business: purchase, form submission, click to call. Google renamed GA4 "conversions" to "key events" in 2024; "conversions" now refers to what you import into Google Ads

The reports you'll use most

Traffic acquisition

Which channels bring sessions (organic search, social, email, paid, direct, referral) and how many key events and how much revenue each one drives.

Your weekly starting point.

Pages and screens

Which pages get the most views and engagement time.

Find your best content and your leaky pages.

Monetization

For online stores: revenue, top products, average purchase value.

Requires ecommerce events with values.

Explorations

Custom reports such as funnels: viewed product → added to cart → began checkout → purchased.

Shows exactly where people drop off.

Privacy: U.S. state laws apply to analytics and ad tracking

There's no single federal privacy law for marketing data, but 24 states had comprehensive consumer privacy laws as of October 2026, according to the policy tracker MultiState. California's CCPA applies to for-profit businesses that meet a threshold, such as annual revenue above $26,625,000 (the 2025 adjusted figure) or buying, selling or sharing the data of 100,000 or more California consumers. Covered businesses that "sell" or "share" data, which can include ad pixels used for cross-context behavioral advertising, need a "Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information" (or "Your Privacy Choices") link and must honor browser opt-out signals like Global Privacy Control. Even if you're below every threshold, a clear privacy policy and a consent banner are good practice. Some visitors will opt out, so treat your data as trends, not exact accounting. This is general education, not legal advice.

Set up your key events

Decide which actions mean "success" for your business and mark them as key events:

Business type	Key events
Online store	purchase, add_to_cart, begin_checkout, email sign-up
Services	Contact form submitted, click to call, click to text, appointment booked
Content or media	Newsletter subscription, download, scroll depth on key articles

The major store platforms send purchases and their values to GA4 automatically once connected. For clicks on phone numbers or forms, use Google Tag Manager or GA4's own event settings, and test each event before you rely on it.

1. An architecture firm gets most of its clients through its website's contact form and phone calls. What should it mark as key events in GA4?

Page views.
Form submissions and clicks on the phone number.
Time spent on the home page.

Key events are the actions that turn into business. With them in place, you can see which channels and pages generate real leads.

UTM links: know where your sales come from

When someone arrives from an Instagram bio link, a newsletter or a text message, GA4 doesn't always know the source and may file it under "direct." UTM parameters are tags you add to the end of your links to identify where the click came from:

https://www.example.com/starter-bundle/?utm_source=instagram&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=starter_bundle_nov&utm_content=reel_grind

Parameter	What it identifies	Examples
utm_source	The specific source	instagram, newsletter, google, tiktok
utm_medium	The type of channel	social, email, cpc (paid ads), referral, sms
utm_campaign	The campaign	starter_bundle_nov, black_friday_2026
utm_content	The specific piece or variant (optional)	reel_grind, blue_button
utm_term	The keyword (optional, for paid search)	fresh_roasted_coffee

Always lowercase with underscores: "Instagram" and "instagram" show up as two different sources.
One shared spreadsheet with every UTM link, so names stay consistent.
Links built with Google's Campaign URL Builder or the template's formula, never typed by hand.
No UTMs on internal links within your own site: they overwrite the original source of the visit.
Google Ads linked to GA4 with auto-tagging on, so ad clicks are tagged automatically.

2. You're sending the November newsletter with a link to an offer. Which UTM tags are correct?

utm_source=Email&utm_medium=Newsletter November
None: GA4 always knows a visit came from email.
utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=november_offer

Source, medium and campaign, lowercase, no spaces, consistent names. Many email clicks show up as "direct" if they aren't tagged.

Attribution: who gets credit for the sale?

Someone sees a reel (day 1), searches your brand on Google (day 4), joins your list and buys from an email (day 9). Which channel made the sale? It depends on the attribution model:

Last click: all credit to the email. It undervalues the channels that create discovery. GA4 offers it as "paid and organic last click."
Data-driven: GA4's default model spreads the credit according to how each touchpoint actually contributes in your data.
Rule-based models such as first click, linear, time decay and position-based were removed from GA4 and Google Ads in November 2023, so don't look for them in your reports.

The lesson: don't kill a channel just because it "doesn't sell directly" on a last-click basis. Check the conversion paths report and run tests: if you pause a channel and total sales drop, it was contributing.

KPIs for each funnel stage

Stage	Main KPIs
Awareness	Reach to new people, Google impressions, new users
Consideration	Engaged sessions, new subscribers, leads
Conversion	Conversion rate, orders, average order value, CPA
Loyalty	Repeat purchase rate, active customers, customer lifetime value (lesson 12)

Your weekly dashboard

You don't need 50 metrics. Build a table (in Excel, Google Sheets or Looker Studio, Google's free dashboard tool) with 8 to 10 indicators and review it every week at the same time:

Indicator	Last week	This week	Change
Sessions	1,400	1,610	+15.0%
Orders	21	23	+9.5%
Conversion rate	1.50%	1.43%	−0.07 points
Revenue	$1,050	$1,104	+5.1%
Average order value	$50.00	$48.00	−4.0%
Ad spend	$300	$340	+13.3%
ROAS	3.50	3.25	−0.25
New subscribers	85	120	+41.2%

How to read it: traffic and subscribers grew, but conversion slipped and the average order fell from $50 to $48 ($1,104 ÷ 23). The key question: is the new traffic lower quality? The acquisition report answers it. Here is this week's conversion rate by channel:

Orders ÷ sessions by channel this week (scale: 0% to 4%)

Email3.75%

Paid search2.00%

Direct1.25%

Organic1.15%

Social0.53%

Email: 6 orders from 160 sessions · Paid search: 6 from 300 · Direct: 2 from 160 · Organic: 7 from 610 · Social: 2 from 380. Total: 23 orders from 1,610 sessions.

Social traffic brought 380 sessions but converted at only 0.53%: a viral reel brought curious visitors, not buyers. That's fine for awareness, as long as Aurora captures them into the email list, where conversion is highest.

3. A campaign shows a 1.5x ROAS on a last-click basis. What do you do before pausing it?

Pause it immediately: it's losing money.
Check its role in the conversion paths and compare with your margin; it may be creating customers who buy later through another channel.
Double its budget.

Last click undervalues discovery channels. Decide with the full path, data-driven attribution and your margin (lesson 12), ideally with a controlled pause test.

4. Which of these sessions does GA4 count as engaged?

A visitor who reads a single page for 25 seconds and leaves.
A visitor who loads one page and leaves after 4 seconds.
None: GA4 only counts sessions with a purchase.

A session is engaged if it lasts longer than 10 seconds, has a key event or includes two or more page views. Twenty-five seconds on one page qualifies.

Practice exercise: your measurement plan

List the three to five key events for your business.
Create UTM links for your channels: Instagram bio, newsletter, text message and one ad.
Design a weekly dashboard with eight indicators spread across the funnel stages.
If you already have GA4, open the traffic acquisition report: which channel produces the most key events per session?

See solution: an Excel formula to build UTM links

With the destination URL in A2, the source in B2, the medium in C2 and the campaign in D2:

=A2&"?utm_source="&LOWER(B2)&"&utm_medium="&LOWER(C2)&"&utm_campaign="&LOWER(SUBSTITUTE(D2," ","_"))

LOWER converts everything to lowercase and SUBSTITUTE replaces spaces with underscores. If the URL already contains a "?", the second parameter must start with "&" instead; the template's UTM Builder sheet handles that automatically. A sample plan for Aurora: key events = purchase, add_to_cart, begin_checkout and email sign-up; dashboard = sessions, new users, engaged sessions, subscribers, orders, conversion rate, revenue, ROAS and repeat purchase rate.

Summary

GA4 measures events; mark the actions that mean business as key events and test them.
Tag every external link with UTM parameters (source, medium, campaign) in lowercase, with consistent names.
Last click doesn't tell the whole story: use the paths report and data-driven attribution, GA4's default.
Respect state privacy laws: privacy policy, opt-out links where required and Global Privacy Control.
Choose a few KPIs per funnel stage and review them in a weekly dashboard.

You've finished Level 2! Next lesson: Google Ads: How to Build Profitable Search Campaigns. Level 3 begins with how to appear at the top of Google when people search for you, paying only for clicks.