Unlocking Google Analytics: Advanced Tracking & Scroll Depth Strategies That Drive Growth

Before diving in, take a minute to watch this quick video for a solid introduction—it sets the stage for everything you’ll read below.

Google Analytics tracking discussion

Google Analytics (GA) is far more than a simple web analytics tool; it serves as a gateway into the behavior of your website. It enables marketers, businesses and content creators to understand the various ways in which visitors engage and convert prospective users. In this blog, we'll dive into why Google Analytics is useful, explain key performance indicators (KPIs), unpack basic and advanced tracking, and specifically explore the crucial area of scroll tracking, which is an often-overlooked measure of true user engagement.

Why Google Analytics Is Useful

Google Analytics turns anonymous traffic into crucial insights that help drive decision-making. It helps us answer questions such as:

1. Who visits your site?

2. How did they get there?

3. What do they do while they’re there?

4. Where do they drop off, and what makes them convert?

These answers provide actionable insights that can fuel business success. With Google Analytics, content creators, marketers and businesses can:

1. Optimize content for what users truly want.

2. Fine-tune marketing initiatives for increased return-on-investment (ROI).

3. Optimize user experience by pinpointing friction points and bottlenecks.

4. Quantify, with concrete numbers, the performance of various projects to stakeholders.

Choosing the Right Analytics Platform: UA vs. GA4 for Advanced Tracking

If you’re still using Universal Analytics (UA), keep in mind Google has shifted focus to their latest version, Google Analytics 4 (GA4). Here’s how they compare for advanced tracking:

• Universal Analytics (UA):

  • Focuses on sessions and pageviews.

  • Advanced tracking often means custom code or complex setup.

  • Google has officially ended standard data collection for UA.

    
    

• Google Analytics 4 (GA4):

  • Runs on an event-driven model. Every interaction counts as an event, not just pageviews.

  • Tracks scroll depth, video engagement, file downloads, and outbound clicks by default once enhanced measurement is on.

  • Easier to set up custom events for scrolls, clicks, and more, all within the GA4 interface.

  • Includes better privacy options and more detailed reporting.

  • Keeps data flowing into new reports as UA winds down.

    
    

For advanced tracking, always choose GA4. The event-based framework makes it much easier to see what users actually do. It also prepares your site for changes in privacy laws and analytics features down the road.

Core KPIs Measured in Google Analytics

GA offers a buffet of metrics. Here are several KPIs you’ll find on virtually any dashboard:  

KPI	Description	Why It Matters
Sessions	Total visits within a time period	Reveals site popularity
Pageviews	Number of pages viewed	Gauges content consumption patterns
Users	Number of unique individuals who visited	Tracks audience reach
Conversion Rate	% of users finishing desired action	Direct measure of business objectives
Pages per Session	Number of pages users view per visit	Assesses depth of content exploration
Bounce Rate	% of sessions with only a single pageview	Identifies engagement or relevance issues
Average Session Duration	Average time spent per session	Measures interest and engagement
Scroll Depth	How far users scroll down a page	Evaluates content engagement
Event completions	Number of specific actions taken	Tracks micro-interactions

These KPIs track high-level performance as well as specific details that are crucial for growth.

Integrating Google Tag Manager for Granular Event Tracking

Google Tag Manager (GTM) opens the door to flexible, code-free event tracking. Once you connect GTM, you can create, edit, and test new tags right from your browser. Here’s how to get it set up for advanced tracking:

1. Create a GTM Account and Container

   • Go to tagmanager.google.com.

   • Set up a new account and container for your site.

     
     

2. Install the GTM Snippet on Your Site

   • Copy the GTM container snippets.

   • Add them to every page, right after the head tag and immediately after the opening body tag.

     
     

3. Connect Google Analytics 4 to GTM

   • In GTM, choose "Tags," then create a new tag.

   • Select "GA4 Configuration" as your tag type.

   • Enter your GA4 measurement ID (find it in the GA4 property settings).

   • Set the trigger to "All Pages" so every visit is tracked.

     
     

4. Add Advanced Event Tracking Without Code

   • Create new tags for custom events, like scroll tracking or button clicks.

   • Use built-in GTM triggers such as "Scroll Depth," "Click – All Elements," or "Form Submission."

   • For scroll depth, select percentages (e.g., 25, 50, 75, 100 percent) and fire the tag when users cross those points.

   • Send these events to GA4 by choosing "GA4 Event" as the tag type and naming your events clearly (e.g., scroll_50_percent).

     
     

5. Preview and Publish

   • Use GTM’s "Preview" mode to test that your tags and triggers work.

   • Once confirmed, hit "Submit" to publish the changes to your live site.

     
     

Why use GTM?

• Track new actions or update existing ones instantly.

• No need to edit website code for each new event.

• Centralize all your tracking for review and updates.

Setting up GA4 with GTM lets you build a detailed map of how users interact with your site. You can track scrolls, clicks, downloads, or anything else meaningful to your goals—all with a user-friendly setup.

Basic Tracking: The Foundation

The core metrics Google Analytics tracks are pageviews, sessions and users.

For each of these metrics, you can also track geographic breakdowns, visitor counts, top pages, traffic sources as well as high-level behavioral patterns.

Beyond default metrics, Google Analytics Enhanced Measurement (in GA4) provides the auto-tracking of:

1.     File downloads

2.     Site searches

3.     Outbound link clicks

4.     Video engagement

5.     Scrolls (more on this shortly)

This means a significant level of insight that is accessible without a single line of code outside of your initial setup.

Diving Deeper: Custom Event Tracking

Basic tracking reveals surface patterns. However, true digital intelligence stems from tracking custom events. This empowers you to track almost any user interaction, such as:

1.     Form submissions

2.     E-commerce transactions

3.     Video watches

4.     Toggle switches

5.     Button clicks

6.     Social shares

7.     Scroll depth at customizable thresholds

Custom event tracking is primarily done through two methods:

1. Google Tag Manager (GTM): This is the most common and flexible solution, allowing non-developers to deploy powerful tags and triggers.

2. Manual JavaScript coding: This is needed for sites requiring additional customization, or for those not using Tag Manager.

Scroll Tracking: Measuring Real Engagement

Why Scroll Tracking Matters

A page view on its own doesn’t prove engagement. Users might leave (or bounce) within seconds of viewing the page. This is where scroll tracking is useful, as it bridges this gap by quantifying how much of a page people actually consume.

It can help you:

1. Find where users lose interest, whether it is right after the introduction, halfway through the page or nearing its end.

2. Identify effective content clusters versus sections of the page that need improvement.

3. Accurately define real engagement, especially for content-driven pages.

Can Google Analytics Track Scrolling?

Yes, one of the Enhanced Measurement features of Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is the ability to natively track vertical scroll events. By default, it records an event every time a user scrolls to 90% of a page’s vertical distance. These events are denoted as “scroll” within the events section of GA.

How to track scroll depth in Google Analytics (GA4)?

1. Scroll tracking is set to ‘on’ by default (if Enhanced Measurement is enabled).

2. GA fires a “scroll” event when a user crosses 90% vertical scroll, as they approach the bottom of the page.

3. These events help quickly spot how many users engage with your whole content.

Limitations of Default Scroll Tracking

1. Granularity: GA4 only tracks users hitting the 90% scroll mark; we don’t see progress at earlier lengths (10%, 25%, 50%, 75%, etc.). However, this can be customized.

2. No parameters: The default event does not tell us the exact scroll percentage, just that the 90% limit was reached.

3. Vertical only: There is not tracking of horizontal scrolling.

Advanced (Custom) Scroll Tracking: Unlocking Every Facet of User Behavior

Businesses often require greater precision to better decisions about improving user engagement. This is where custom scroll tracking becomes useful.

Setting Up Custom Scroll Tracking

With Google Tag Manager (GTM), you can:

1. Enable Built-in Scroll Variables: In GTM, you can activate built-in variables for different scroll depths (10%, 25%, 50%, 75% etc.) as well as pixel depths.

2. Create a Scroll Trigger: You can create a trigger that is set off for every scroll percentages you would like to track (every 25%, for example).

3. Set Up a GA4 Event Tag: You can then configure a tag to fire a custom “scroll_depth” event after passing as a certain percentage of the page or pixel value.

4. Test the setup in GTM’s Preview mode: After doing so, you can confirm that events appear in GA’s real-time and debug views.

5. Create custom dimensions in GA4: This is useful if you want to report or segment by scroll depth in the interface.

Wrapping Up: The Analytics-Driven Journey

By leveraging Google Analytics’ built-in as well as custom tracking capabilities, you can uncover not just who your users are, but also how they truly engage with every facet of your page or site. Scroll tracking, often ignored, should definitely be a fixture in your analytics toolkit to get a better understand of how deep your content connects. By starting simple, and expanding gradually with clear outcomes, you can leverage Google Analytics’ features to learn and iterate quickly, taking your business to new heights. To learn more about how streaming data and AI can be leverage to generate business insights click here.

If you have questions or want to share your thoughts on Google Analytics tracking to business success, contact us here.

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