Events in GA4 are user interactions with your website or app that are tracked by the GA4 tracking code. Events can include a wide range of actions, such as button clicks, video views, form submissions, or downloads. Or in e-commerce interactions with products, checkout steps, purchases, refunds, etc.
In GA4, events are categorized by event parameters, which provide additional context and detail about the user interaction. There are some recommended event parameters by Google, and you can also create your own parameters for each event.
Events can be tracked using the GA4 tracking code, which can be added to your website or app using Google Tag Manager. Once events are tracked, you can view event reports in the GA4 interface to analyze user behavior and identify trends and opportunities for optimization.
Although Google provides a precise list of events that should be used in GA4, not all of them are equally useful. Our best practice for e-commerce events is to deploy the following events as a minimum:
view_item
add_to_cart
remove_from_cart
begin_checkout
add_shipping_info
add_payment_info
purchase
For the next measurement or leadgen it can still be generate_lead or form_submit.
If you have these events deployed, you can beautifully track user movement within the page, cart abandonment rates at each step and of course purchases.
Of course this is only the minimum if you don’t want to spend a lot of time on it. With every GA4 deployment or audit we take an individual approach and set up events and parameters according to the client’s needs. We use our GA4 standard events cheatsheet, which you can download here.
Want to learn how to deploy these events via GTM and have a basic GA4 setup out of your neck in a few hours? Check out our GA4 Toolbox Essentials!
