GA4 events: your flight instruments
· 5 min read · Sathya J
No instruments, no mission
A pilot who cannot read altitude, speed or fuel is guessing. A website owner without event tracking is in the same position. GA4 is built around events: every page view, click and form submission is an event with parameters attached.
Decide what the dials mean first
Before opening Google Tag Manager, write a tracking plan: the event name, when it fires, and which parameters it carries. On this site, for example, a CV download fires mission_log_cv_download with a location parameter, and the contact form fires contact_submit.
Keep names lowercase with underscores and avoid inventing a new event when a recommended GA4 event, such as generate_lead, already fits.
Wire it up in three steps
Push the event into the dataLayer from the page. Create a Custom Event trigger in GTM that matches the event name. Add a GA4 Event tag that fires on the trigger and passes the parameters.
Then verify in GTM Preview mode and GA4 DebugView before marking the event as a key event. If the number in DebugView does not match what you did on the page, stop and fix it before trusting any report.
Questions or ideas? Send a message.