7 Ways to Track Form Submissions in Google Analytics 4

Updated: September 14th, 2023

If you use Google Analytics (GA) to analyze web traffic on your site, you may also want to track contact form submissions, right?  A question I hear frequently is “can I track form submissions in GA?”. The answer is yes, and I’ll show you how. To make Google Analytics form tracking happen, you’ll need a website with a form, Google Tag Manager, and Google Analytics.

Important: Don’t use built-in form tracking in GA4

GA4 offers an automatic form tracking feature as part of Enhanced Measurement. However, it will not work well in most cases.

It does not support AJAX forms (a.k.a. forms that do not reload the page). It can falsely track form submissions where required fields are left blank (in many cases). And there are more problems with it.

I talk more about it in this YouTube tutorial.

That’s why I highly recommend you take form tracking into your own hands and configure it with Google Tag Manager. The rest of this blog post will be focused on that.

Google Analytics Form Tracking: Context

In this wonderful thing called THE INTERNET, there are various types of forms. Some of them refresh after a successful submission, some of them don’t, some of them redirect you to a “thank you” page, etc.

The main problem with form tracking is that there are no global standards of how one should develop forms. Some developers may prefer one technology (e.g. AJAX) over another – and they have a full right to do so.

That’s why I’ll show you not one but a bunch of form-tracking techniques: every form requires a different method. However, the result will be the same: after a successful form submission, a pageview (or event) will be sent to Google Analytics, where you’ll see them in detailed reports.

Why Do We Need Google Tag Manager here?

To make Google Analytics form tracking work, we need to send data from our website to Google’s servers, and the best way to achieve this is to use Google Tag Manager.

Google Tag Manager is free software from Google that allows you to deploy various types of code (tags) to your website.

Good examples of tags would be Google Analytics tracking codes, Google Analytics event codes, Google Ads conversion scripts, remarketing tags, etc.

Google Tag Manager is a middleman between your website and Google Analytics:

• It tracks interactions on your website.
• If a particular event (e.g., form submission) occurs, it sends corresponding data to Google Analytics (or any other analytics tool of your choice).

I have published a detailed explanation of the difference between Google Tag Manager and Google Analytics. If you are not sure whether to start using GTM at all, here are 11 reasons to do so.

So What’s The Plan?

We’ll need to complete the following steps:

1. Own a Google Analytics account (I assume you already have one, so I’ll skip this part).
2. Create a Google Tag Manager account and properly install it.
3. Create a trigger in Google Tag Manager. This part is the most complex because you’ll need to inspect the form and decide which form-tracking method is the most suitable.
4. Create a Google Analytics event tag in Google Tag Manager.
5. Link that tag with the trigger.
6. Test.

If you are struggling with Google Tag Manager or haven’t used it before, take a look at my free GTM fundamentals mini-course.

7 Google Analytics form tracking techniques (with GTM)

Next thing you should do: read a very detailed step-by-step guide I have recently published – Google Tag Manager Form Tracking.

Hint: some Google Analytics form-tracking techniques might require a developer’s input, but I’ll try to put everything in plain English.

That blog post received very warm feedback, so I hope you’ll find it useful, too.

Topics covered in that guide:

#1. Google Tag Manager Form Tracking With Form Auto-Event Listener
#2. “Thank You” Page Tracking With Google Tag Manager
#3. AJAX Form Tracking With Google Tag Manager
#4. Google Tag Manager Form Tracking With Data Layer Events
#5. Form Tracking with the help of DOM Scraping
#6. Form Tracking with Element Visibility Trigger
#7. Writing Your Own Form Auto-event Listener

Is your form hosted on WordPress?

WordPress is a very popular content management system. That’s why I have several ready-made solutions for the most popular WordPress form plugins (but they will all require Google Tag Manager).

• How to track Contact Form 7 with Google Tag Manager
• How to track Caldera Forms with Google Tag Manager
• How to track Gravity Forms with Google Tag Manager

On the other hand, with GTM, you will gain much more flexibility regarding web tracking. By learning how to track forms with Google Analytics, you will also learn how to send the form submission events to other marketing tools, like Facebook Pixel.

Form Submissions in Google Analytics 4: Conclusion

Form tracking with Google Analytics will not be easy, but it’s possible. The most recommended way is to send form submission data to GA via Google Tag Manager (GTM).

GTM is an outstanding (and free) tool by Google that lets you capture data on your website and transfer it to other tools, like Adwords or Analytics.

I have published a detailed step-by-step guide on how to track form submissions via GTM and push the corresponding data to Google Analytics. Make sure you read it.

If you have any questions, feel free to post a comment.