Google Analytics & Google Tag Manager

Step 1: Setup Google Analytics (GA4)

1. Create a new Google Analytics Account

1. Name your account (e.g. vacation rental brand name)

1. Once you’ve created an account, you’ll need to create a property. You can use your vacation rental brand name again or website URL. Set your time zone and preferred currency.

1. Describe your business and specify the information you’d like to report on.

1. Now create a Data Stream. Select “Web” so that you can start collecting data from your website. Enter your self-hosted domain or Dtravel domain (if you have not yet purchased a self-hosted domain) and click “Create Stream”.

1. Once you’ve created a stream you’ll be shown how to manually install GA4 on your website. Don’t worry about this as we’ll be using Google Tag Manager to send data from your website to Google Analytics. All you need here is your measurement ID.

2. Locate your GA4 Measurement ID (it should look like “G-XXXXXXXXXX”) and copy that into your notes. We’ll be using coming back to this in a minute once we have Google Tag Manager Setup.

Step 2: Setup Google Tag Manager

1. Create a new Google Tag Manager Account

1. Name your Google Tag Manager account (e.g. your vacation rental business’ brand name) and create a name for your Google Tag Manager Container. Select “Web” and continue.

1. Accept the Google Tag Manager Terms of Service.

1. Locate your Google Tag Manager ID and add it to the settings in your Dtravel Direct dashboard.

1. Navigate to your Dtravel Direct Settings and paste your Google Tag Manager ID.

1. Click “New Tag” in the top left hand corner.

1. Name your new tag “Google Tag | GA4 | Page View”

1. Click “Tag Configuration” and select “Google Tag”

1. Now we need to locate our GA4 Measurement ID. If you didn’t save it in your notes then you can locate it within your data stream by heading back to Google Analytics GA4.

1. Click the gear icon to access your GA4 “Settings” in the bottom left hand corner. Then click “Data streams” under Property settings inside the “Data collection and modification” block.

1. Click “Web” and then click on your data stream. Once you’ve accessed your data stream, copy the GA4 Measurement ID.

1. Now head back over to Google Tag Manager and click the plus sign next to the Tag ID input field. Note: Instead of simply pasting the GA4 Measurement ID into the Tag ID field, we’re going create a variable so that you won’t have to copy and paste the GA4 Measurement ID every time you want to create a new Tag.

1. Now click the plus sign in the top right hand corner.

1. Name the variable “GA4 Measurement ID”. Now select “Variable Configuration” and then scroll down and select “Constant”.

1. Paste your GA4 Measurement ID as the value and click save.

1. Now we need to select a trigger for your tag. Select the “Initialization - All Pages” trigger. This will fire your tag on all pages of your booking site before any other tags.

1. Now click “Save” in the top right hand corner.

1. In order to send booking details to GA4, we’ll need to add another tag. To do this, we’ll use Google’s E-commerce events. Click on “New” to create a new tag.

1. Create a new tag and name it “Google Tag | GA4 | Bookings”. Then click tag type and select “Google Analytics: GA4 Event” again.

1. For the Measurement ID we can use the variable we created earlier on in this tutorial. Click the “plus” icon next to Measurement ID and select “GA4 Measurement ID”.

1. Now click the “plus” icon next to Event Name and select “Event”.

1. Click on “More settings” and select “Send Ecommerce data”.

1. Next, click on Triggering and select the blue “plus” icon in the top right hand corner to create a new trigger.

1. Name your event “GA4 Booking Events” and click on “Trigger Configuration”.

1. Scroll down and select “Custom Event”.

1. Add this string of events to the event name: view_item|view_item_list|select_item|add_to_cart|remove_from_cart|view_cart|begin_checkout|add_payment_info|add_shipping_info|purchase

1. Next tick the “regex matching” box and click save in the top right hand corner.

1. Click “Save” in the top right hand corner for the trigger and click “Save” again for the tag. Now we’re going to Preview the tags.

1. Lets now test that both the Tags are firing correctly, by clicking “Preview” in the top right hand corner.

1. Add your website URL and then click “Connect”

1. Your direct booking site should load in a new tab.

1. Click through to different parts of the page and try making a test booking to ensure conversion events are tracking properly.

1. Try running a test conversion to make sure GA4 is able to read booking conversion data from your direct booking site.

1. Once you’ve finished completing the test booking, head back over to Google Tag Manager to take a look at the data that has been recorded.



 

2. Click through the different events to get an understanding of the data new you’ll be sending to GA4 through the Page View and Booking tags we created.

1. If everything looks like it is working properly, exit out of the Google Tag Manager Debugger and click “Submit” in the top right hand corner of the Tag Manager Overview page.

1. Name the submission and click “Publish”.

1. Nice work! You’re now sending website traffic data to GA4 using Google Tag Manager. Using GA4’s built in reports, you can see where website traffic is coming and which of these sources lead to a conversion!

2. Visit your Google Analytics GA4 dashboard to start familiarizing yourself with some of the built-in reports or begin creating your own.

3. In a later tutorial, we’ll show you how you can create tags for both Google Ads and Facebook Ads with Google Tag Manager, enabling you to manage all of your Google Analytics GA4 data inputs in one place.