Goal Tracker – Custom Event Tracking for GA4 vs GTM Kit – Google Tag Manager & GA4 integration

TLDR: Goal Tracker for Google Analytics GA4 is a no-code plugin that helps you set up event tracking for your WordPress website. This plugin makes it easy to track in-page elements such as call-to-action buttons, forms, ad visibility, and more with Google Analytics GA4. Best of all is that you don’t have to write custom code. Working with GA4 can be challenging, especially if you migrate from Universal Analytics. But if you give it a chance, GA4 can become a powerful tool. We set out to help you become an advanced user of Google Analytics without having to learn code. 🎁 What’s in the box? Track Links – both internal and external Track Email Links – We create a dedicated event for email links. Visibility Tracking – Fire an event when an element comes into view on the page (Ads, CTA buttons, Pricing Tables…) Click Tracking – Track user clicks on any element on the page, such as a contact form submit button or a call to action button. Recommended Events – Our user interface takes out the guesswork when using “recommended events”. Much more to come in the next few months. Upgrade to our Pro version: Goal Tracker for Google Analytics GA4 is the professional version of our plugin and adds more tracking capabilities: WooCommerce Tracking User Tracking Placeholders to enrich your event data Track Self-Hosted Media audio and video YouTube and Vimeo support Plugin Management permissions for teams Track Contact Form 7 submissions Access to our Pro support team Want to see the plugin in action? 🏷 Already using Google Tag Manager? While Google Tag Manager has been here for years, we think that could improve when it comes to event tracking. Goal Tracker for Google Analytics reduces the guesswork involved with recommended events and only takes a few clicks. Oh, and the plugin can work on a website that already uses Google Tag Manager. Need help? You can read the documentation pages here – https://www.wpgoaltracker.com/ga4-help-center/ 🗓 Want to reach out? If you have any questions or suggestions or need help setting up the plugin, you can schedule a call, and we’ll be happy to chat.

GTM Kit puts the Google Tag Manager container code on your website so that you don’t need to touch any code. It also pushes data from WooCommerce, Easy Digital Downloads (EDD) and Contact Form 7 to the data layer for use with for Google Analytics 4, Facebook and other GTM tags. The goal of GTM Kit is to provide a flexible tool for generating the data layer for Google Tag Manager. It is easy to use and doesn’t require any coding, but it allows developers to customize the plugin as needed. The settings are organised around what you are trying to do (Setup, Events & data layer, Commerce, Consent & privacy, and Tools), so related options live together and the setting you need is quick to find. Know when your tracking breaks Tracking fails quietly. A caching plugin strips the container out of the page, a second plugin loads it a second time, a staging copy reports into your live property, and nothing on the settings screen says so. GTM Kit checks one of your own pages once a day, the way a visitor receives it, and tells you when nothing on your site is loading your container, or when your pages load tracking twice. Where it recognises the plugin or tool adding the second copy, it names it. Two checks in WordPress’s own Site Health screen report whether your container is set up and reaching your pages, and whether consent is configured. A GTM Kit section on the Info tab lists your whole configuration on one screen and copies it into a support request with one click. On sites WordPress reports as staging, development or local, GTM Kit leaves the container out, so test traffic never reaches your live analytics. The data layer is still built there, and a setting loads the container anyway when you are measuring a test site on purpose. eCommerce events tracked with Google Analytics 4 The following GA4 events are automatically included in the dataLayer: WooCommerce view_item_list select_item view_item add_to_wishlist [Premium] add_to_cart view_cart remove_from_cart begin_checkout add_shipping_info add_payment_info purchase refund [Premium] order_paid [Premium] order_processing [Premium] order_completed [Premium] order_refunded [Premium] subscription_started [Premium] Unlock all features with GTM Kit Premium. Easy Digital Downloads view_item add_to_cart begin_checkout purchase Flexible container implementation Depending on how you use Google Tag Manager you can delay the loading of the container script until the browser is idle. This may be relevant to you be if are focusing on pagespeed. You may enter a custom domain name if you are using a custom server side GTM (sGTM) container for tracking. It’s also possible to specify a custom loader. GTM Kit has full support for Stape server GTM hosting. You can also exclude specific pages from GTM entirely. Add URL patterns on the Container settings page and GTM Kit holds back the container, the noscript fallback, and its data layer scripts on matching pages. Useful for third-party checkout iframes, partner-hosted subpages, and in-app webview routes that run their own tracking. Glob patterns are supported by default, with optional regex for advanced matching. Moving from another Google Tag Manager plugin GTM Kit imports settings from Google Tag Manager for WordPress, Google Tag Manager for WooCommerce, Metronet Tag Manager and other GTM plugins, at any time, from the Tools page. Your container ID, data layer variables, Consent Mode defaults, excluded user roles and container environment come across in one step. Before anything is written you see exactly which of your settings will be replaced, and only settings the other plugin actually configured are touched. Post data You may specify which post data elements you wish to include in the dataLayer for use in Google Tag Manager. – Post type: include the type of the current post or archive page. – Page type: include a defined page type. I.e. post, page, product, category, cart, checkout etc. – Categories: include the categories of the current post or archive page. – Tags: include the tags of the current post or archive page. – Post title: include the post title of the current post. – Post ID: include the Post ID of the current post. – Post date: include the post date. – Post author name: include the post author name. – Post author ID: include the post author ID.