How to create a Custom Conversion in Google Analytics 4

As we have seen in previous posts, Google Analytics 4 allows to automatically track specific types of conversions (eg purchase) or to make an event a conversion by simply clicking on the toggle in the “All Events” report.

So you can insert an event as a conversion but .. if you had to set a custom event without going through coding (hardcoded or via google tag manager), how can I do it? For example: in the Universal Analytics version I can create a goal using the page views. How I can translate that goal in Google Analytics 4?

Easier to do it than to write it 🙂 Let’s see together the steps to achieve it or you can go to the end to the post and see the video tutorial.

Custom Conversion in GA4

Let’s start with an example: I want to make the pageview / contacts / of my website as a conversion -> https://www.analyticsboosters.com/contacts/ Obviously I can’t set the “page_view” event as a conversion, since all the pages viewed would become a conversion, then:

1. Go to the Events> All Events interface
2. At the top right click on “Create Event” (blue button)

3. The event creation screen will open

4. At this point you need to set a meaningful name to the event, in this case “contacts_goal”.

Then, go to the “Matching Conditions” section and enter the parameter that identifies your conversion in the “Parameter” field: in our case select “page_location” from the drilldown menu (or write it by hand).

After that select the conditional operator, for example “contains”, and enter the value of the parameter of interest: in this case analyticsboosters.com/contacts/.

If everything looks fine, click Save.

5. At this point go to “Events> Conversions” and click the button at the top right “New Conversion Events” and, once the form is displayed, enter the same name as the newly event created. By default you will find the event with the toggle activated.

Custom Conversion Check

Now just generate the event within the site, in our case just view the contact page of the site, and view the “Real Time” tab. In this report, if everything has been configured correctly, you will find it under “Event Count by Event Name” and under “Conversion by Event Name”.

Final Thought to GA4 Custom Conversions

As you can see, creating a custom conversion event becomes quite simple through the GA4 interface and sometimes, as in the example above, you don’t even need to go through code changes or Google Tag Manager.

Consider, however, that you will not see the event immediately as soon as it is created within All Events as GA4 is detecting it and it takes a few hours to display the customizations generated.

Here the video tutorial: