How to set up website analytics

A website may look convincing, with a well-structured layout, quality content, and appealing design. However, this visual polish does not guarantee that everything under the hood works just as perfectly. As long as there is no understanding of how users interact with page elements, where they stop, what they skip, and what influences their decisions, the website’s effectiveness remains in question. In such circumstances, it becomes difficult to determine what exactly needs to be changed – the product, its presentation, the traffic source, or the funnel logic itself. Any decision made without this context is simply an assumption, not a response to an actual problem, and it lacks the foundation needed for further action. So let’s explore how to set up website analytics, what is required, and what mistakes should be avoided right from the start.

What web analytics is and why it matters for business

Web analytics is a system that records and processes everything that happens on a website from the moment a user arrives until the end of their session. It goes far beyond just pageviews and sessions – its structure includes events, clicks, navigation paths, time spent on pages, and traffic sources, including achieved (or missed) goals. It also involves external systems – CRMs, pixels, tag managers, heatmaps, and visualization tools – providing a complete picture of user behavior within a unified environment. That’s why technical requirements for modern websites should be considered from the beginning and adapted flexibly to future use cases and specific project needs.

Analytics serves as the foundation on which decisions are made about campaign strategies, site structure, and client interaction models. It allows businesses to move beyond assumptions and observe how users behave in different scenarios – where expectations break down, where the funnel weakens, and why certain offers fail. All this is based not on guesses or hypotheses but on concrete data directly tied to real outcomes. As a result, businesses can clearly understand the conditions under which specific effects arise and adjust their actions in real time rather than after a campaign has ended.

Where analytics setup begins

For clients who want internet marketing services, our team offers a comprehensive collaboration format, with special attention to the following aspects:

• Formulating business goals. From the outset, we define key performance indicators for the website – from conversions and average check value to retention metrics – laying the groundwork for subsequent auditing and consulting.
• Assessing the current site structure. We conduct a technical and behavioral analysis to identify critical friction points – drop-off locations, ineffective transitions, and redundant elements that prevent a coherent analytics model from being built.
• Selecting tracking tools. Depending on the CMS, page structure, and traffic characteristics, we choose the optimal stack – GA4, GTM, pixel, heatmap, Microsoft Clarity – taking into account project goals and the desired level of detail.
• Developing an event and goal map. We design a connected system of events, tags, and goals, capturing both core actions and micro-conversions – clicks, scrolls, filters, and category selections – to clearly understand user movement logic.
• Analyzing CRM and external systems. We examine integration formats with CRMs, email services, contact forms, and ad platforms, ensuring seamless tracking of all touchpoints with accurate user identification.
• Implementing integrations and scripts. We configure counters, UTM tracking, connections with tag managers and pixels, preventing duplicate events and data synchronization failures between analytics and collection systems.
• Planning ongoing support. We develop onboarding and support protocols, anticipating changes in goals and site updates, with continuous improvements to reporting based on accumulated data.

How to correctly integrate GA4, GTM, and related tools

Analytics integration goes far beyond simply adding a script. It starts with system modeling, where GA4, GTM, social media pixels, Search Console, heatmaps, and visualization tools all work together as one mechanism. To ensure timely, conflict-free data collection, it’s critical to consider website use cases and define the conditions under which key signals should be triggered before launch. Otherwise, tags won’t fire at the right moment, events won’t link together, and the reports will lose their value by failing to reflect the real flow of user interaction.

It’s important to understand that integration only works when it is carefully planned from the beginning. Its logic must align with the business model, the website’s structure, and how events are processed. That’s why at QuatroIT we take a phased approach to implementation. We design the tracking structure, configure environments, and connect them with CRM and dashboards, delivering a stable and fully operational system to the client. This eliminates the risk of technical failures – as highlighted in our guide on how to make your website GDPR-compliant, which outlines common mistakes and practical data handling recommendations.

Key metrics for evaluating user behavior and site performance

When working with analytics, we go beyond implementation and focus on a wide range of indicators that reflect user behavior and help identify where performance is being lost:

How to avoid mistakes that undermine even perfect analytics

In practice, analytics loses its value not due to lack of tools but because of errors and violations in data collection logic. That’s why technical support covers the full cycle – from goal setting to CRM integration and external system alignment – with a primary focus on fixing these common issues:

1. Incorrectly defined goals and events. In GA4, the default event gtag(‘event’, ‘click’) is often used without key parameters like event_category, event_label, or value, resulting in ungrouped data and poor insight into user behavior.
2. Duplicate tracking tags. When GA4 is integrated both via hardcoded site scripts and GTM, the system logs events twice, distorting analytics and inflating performance metrics without actual user activity.
3. No connection with CRM. Without transmitting a unique user_id, analytics cannot link on-site sessions with subsequent CRM actions, making accurate lead tracking and ROI calculation impossible.
4. Incorrect traffic tagging. Errors in UTM tags (utmmedium, utm-campaign, capital letters, spaces) create separate sources in reports, complicating analysis and budget allocation across channels.
5. Confusion with filters and properties. Unnormalized URLs with no distinction between subdomains (site.com, www.site.com, blog.site.com) and the lack of internal traffic exclusions in GA4 lead to session splits across properties, distorting report structure and breaking holistic analysis.

Does your website need extra attention or a check-up? No problem. The experts at our web studio will take over maintenance – from analyzing the current situation to promptly resolving identified issues. They will also explain which SEO mistakes are most common in online stores and help eliminate them at the start of your project, strictly following all prior agreements. Contact us – the QuatroIT team is here to help!