Planning website analytics before launch

Step 1: questions and decisions

Write down the questions the business will ask:

• Which channels bring enquiries and customers?
• Which pages lead to enquiries, and where do visitors leave?
• Which services or products get interest but no enquiries?
• How do visitors from different languages and devices behave?

For each, note the decision it informs — budget allocation, page improvements, new content. This keeps the setup focused.

Step 2: key events

Typical events for a business website:

• form submitted successfully (not just the button clicked);
• phone number clicked;
• WhatsApp or Telegram link clicked;
• email address clicked;
• booking started and completed;
• purchase and its value;
• file downloads, such as price lists or catalogs;
• key interactions: calculator used, video watched.

Mark the events that represent business results as key events (conversions). Details in GA4 events plan.

Step 3: implementation in the templates

Developers add a data layer and event hooks in the site's templates, so tracking survives design changes. Forms send events only after successful submission; e-commerce pages send product and order data.

Step 4: campaign tagging

Agree on UTM conventions — source, medium and campaign names — and use them for all ads, emails, messenger links and social posts. Inconsistent tags make channel reports unreliable. See UTM tags guide.

Step 5: connecting to sales

Website analytics shows enquiries; the CRM shows which enquiries became customers. Pass the source and campaign of each enquiry into the CRM, and send qualified leads and sales back to analytics and ad platforms. This is the basis of end-to-end analytics.

Step 6: consent and privacy

• Describe analytics in the privacy policy.
• Use a consent mechanism where required and make sure tags respect it.
• Do not send names, phone numbers or emails to analytics as event parameters.

See privacy policy for websites in Azerbaijan.

Step 7: reports and owners

Decide who looks at which report and how often. A simple dashboard with a few key numbers — traffic by channel, enquiries by channel and page, conversion rate, sales by source — is more useful than access to every report in GA4. See dashboards.

Step 8: test before launch

On the staging site, trigger every event and check that it arrives with the right parameters. After launch, compare analytics events with actual form submissions and orders for the first weeks.

Tools

• GA4 for website and app analytics. See GA4 setup.
• Google Tag Manager to manage tags.
• Search Console for search performance.
• Session recordings or heatmaps for qualitative insight, used within privacy rules.
• CRM for lead and sales data.