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 done primarily through two methods:

Google Tag Manager (GTM): This is the most commonly used and as well as flexible method for custom event tracking. GTM helps analysts and marketers create tags (tracking scripts) and triggers (activation rules) for various types of user interactions, without the need for developer skills. This allows event tracking to modular and scalable with our modifying site code directly.

Manual JavaScript Coding: For those without GTM or those with customized website, developers can create custom JavaScript event listeners that send detailed interaction data directly to GA through the gtag.js or analytics.js APIs. This is often a necessary method in order to create complex or unique UI elements.

The Value of Custom Event Tracking

Custom events reveal micro-conversions and other behavioral patterns that provide into engagement quality. Examples include:

1.     Tracking “Add to Cart” or “Checkout” button clicks highlights friction points in e-commerce purchasing funnels

2.     Monitoring interactions with video objects (such as pause, play, fast forward) helps optimize the placement of multimedia content

3.     Measuring interactive widgets, navigation drops toggle switches can drive UX improvements

4.     Share clicks on social media sites help quantify virality potential or content advocacy

5.     Scroll depth events quantify how much content users consume, which helps drive decisions on content placement and structure

Unlocking Every Facet of User Behavior with Advanced Scroll Tracking

While GA4’s Enhanced Measurement provides native scroll tracking at the 90% page depth limit, it offers a lot more functionality for more detailed analysis of content engagement. Precise data points of scroll behavior at different intervals can help us gain a more nuanced understanding of drop-off points and time-based user attention metrics.

Setting Up Custom Scroll Tracking with GTM

1.     Enable Built-in Scroll Variables: GTM offers built-in variables that help us track pixel depths and vertical scroll percentages (10%, 25%, 50%, 75%, 90%). These variables help unlock scroll position data that is accessible in tags and triggers

2.     Set up Scroll Triggers: Create triggers to fire at the scroll depths of your choice. For example, define triggers so that they activate at every 10% of the page or at predetermined pixel points that map to key content sections or calls to action.

3.     Create GA4 Event Tags: Configure GA4 event tags in GTM to fire custom events such as scroll depth with parameters that signify precise pixel values or scroll percentages. This will help enrich your GA data with more useful scroll engagement metrics.

4.     Test and Debug: Make use of GTM’s Preview mode as well as GA4’s Realtime and DebugView reports to verify, before going live, that the parameters are being defined correctly and that events are being fired accurately.

5.     Define Custom Dimensions in GA4: Create custom dimensions that scroll depth parameters to create detailed segmentation as well as reporting GA4’s interface.

Beyond Vertical Scrolling

Currently, horizontal scrolling tracking capabilities are not offered. However, this can be done using custom JavaScript or third-party libraries that can be integrated with GTM. With such customization, more advanced use-cases such as scroll velocity and inertial or momentum-based scroll metrics can also be tracked. This can be especially important for image galleries or other websites with horizontal layouts in addition, of course, to websites with infinite scrolling features such as social media sites.

Advanced Tracking Benefits

There are several advantages to leveraging custom event and scroll tracking, such as:

1.     Gaining detailed insight into where and why users lose interest within your pages

2.     Improving content formatting and layout by identifying which sections of your site engage visitors or drive them away

3.     Attributing content engagement to conversions with greater precision along the entire funnel

4.     Segmenting and retargeting audiences after examining their previous interaction patterns

This level of granularity is not possible with basic pageview features or 90% scroll events alone. Advanced tracking and can therefore be a complete game changer if you are looking to optimize conversion rates, design a great user experience or refine your content strategy.

This diagram below provides a high-level yet expansive look into the processes involved in the

GTM Flow Diagram

setup, right from initial preparation to validation.

Wrapping Up: The Analytics-Driven Journey

By leveraging Google Analytics’ and 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.

If you have questions or want to share your thoughts on Google Analytics tracking to business success, contact us here. To learn more about how streaming data and AI can be leverage to generate business insights click here.

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