74% of all websites on the internet use forms to catch leads, whether it’s an email marketing form (for instance, an email newsletter) or a lead-generation form on your landing page. Even the checkout process consists of forms. Therefore, it is critical to track, at least, form submissions, at most, form interactions in Google Analytics 4.
As a result of tracking users’ engagement with the forms, you can remove some unnecessary fields in the form or change your form from a one-page one to a two-step one that can boost your conversions afterwards. By conversions, I mean the number of leads, transactions, orders, and bets.
However, many people get stuck on this step after they migrate from Universal Analytics to Google Analytics 4 because they don’t know how to set up form tracking in Google Analytics 4.
Therefore, I wrote this article to explain how to set up the form tracking in Google Analytics 4 in 15 minutes and enjoy seeing your first data. So, let’s get started.
How to track the form submission in Google Analytics 4 using Enhanced Measurement
Not many people know that on September 29, 2022, Google added form interaction events in Enhanced Measurement.
That means that you need to take only a few steps to set up Google Analytics 4 to track form submissions (no code changes are required):
- Log in to your GA4 account
- Go to Admin -> Data Streams.
- Click on the relevant data stream for which you want to enable form tracking.
- Click on the gear icon under the “Enhanced measurement” section.
- Toggle to activate “Form interactions”.
- That’s it! GA4 will start to collect the first events automatically.
After you make the steps above, the question is usually where I can find the events and what events are. Firstly, you can find events in “Reports” -> “Engagement” -> “Events” report.
Secondly, Google Analytics 4 collects two events by default:
- form_start
- form_submit
The first event is fired whenever a new user interacts with the form (click on the form field). The second event is generated whenever the form is successfully submitted.
Google Analytics 4 form events also come up with a few parameters that can help you to understand which form specifically GA4 means:
Event Property | Event Name | Explanation |
form_id | form_start, form_submit | HTML id attribute of the <form> DOM element |
form_name | form_start, form_submit | HTML name attribute of the <form> DOM element |
form_destination | form_start, form_submit | URL to which the form is being submitted |
form_submit_text | form_submit | text of the submit button, if present |
Note: You can only use the parameters in your Explore reports if you create custom dimensions for them. Therefore, please be mindful and select only those that you really need to use.
Looking at the steps above, we can agree that you can spend 15 minutes activating GA4 form tracking and enjoy seeing the data shortly. But what if you have a WordPress website with a contact form 7?
How to track the contact form 7 submissions on WordPress websites
If you have a WordPress website and use Contact Form 7, I recommend you try the method explained in the section above – Enhanced Measurement. It works for me for my WordPress website; it should work for you.
However, if you tried Enhanced Measurement in GA4 and it doesn’t measure your form submissions accurately. I recommend you do the following steps:
- Install and activate the plugin GTM4WP
- Go to “Settings” -> “Google Tag Manager” Page
- Provide “Google Tag Manager ID”
- Click on tab “Integrations”
- Turn on “Contact Form” (Check this to fire dataLayer events after Contact Form 7 submissions)
- Open Google Tag Manager
- Create a new trigger
- Type – “Custom Event”
- Event name – “gtm4wp.contactForm7Submitted”
- Trigger Name – “cf7 form submission”
- Create a new tag
- Type – “Google Analytics: GA4 Event”
- Configuration Tag – Your GA4 Configuration Tag
- Event name – “form_submitted”
- Name – “GA4 – Event – CF7 Form Submission”
- Trigger – “cf7 form submission”
If you made every step right, you should get the same data you can see on my screenshots.
After that, you should publish the GTM container and enjoy measuring CF7 Form on WordPress in Google Analytics 4.
Other ways to track the form submissions
There are other ways to track the form submission using Google Tag Manager in Google Analytics 4. Some of them you can find in this article. Although there are many ways to do it, it doesn’t mean you should follow the most difficult one.
If GA4 Enhanced Measurement can track the form submission for the forms on your website, I recommend you stick to it.
Final Word
Google added form interaction events in Enhanced Measurement on September 29, 2022. That means you don’t need to make any changes in the code to track forms on your website.
Therefore, in this article, I showed you how to enable this feature in Google Analytics 4 and track forms on WordPress websites if this feature doesn’t work for you.
Let me know if you get stuck and can’t analyse your form by leaving a comment below.
Yes, Google Analytics can automatically track form submissions and interactions without updating the website code. Everything you need to do is to activate “Form interactions” in Enhanced Measurement.
Yes, Google Analytics can track form interactions automatically without updating the website code. Everything you need to do is to activate “Form interactions” in Enhanced Measurement.
There are two ways to track CF7 form submissions in GA4:
1. You can use Enhanced Measurement in Google Analytics 4.
2. You can track the Contact Form 7 on the WordPress website in Google Analytics 4 using the plugin GTM4WP and Google Tag Manager.
The first option is the most frequently used.
Grate post, thank you for sharing .
I was wondering if you have information on how to track form submission in shopify plugin called “OMG” it’s an external form.
Here is the url:
https://tekprotection.cl/products/kit-12-candados-tek-mk12-con-llave-maestra-tekprotection
Hi thank you for the guide, I have just added this on my wordpress site, and checked the GA real time report, but no contact from data is showing yet, its showing my visits and page views but not the contact form start, is there usually a delay?
Hi Steve,
Does it show form_submit but not form_start, or does it not show both events?
Ihar