Google Analytics development at ZeroPixel
Almost every business has Google Analytics installed. Far fewer have it telling the truth. The usual state of affairs is a GA4 property added years ago with default settings, no conversion events configured, internal traffic counted as customers, and a bounce rate someone quotes in meetings without knowing what it now measures. The data isn't wrong so much as unanswerable.
Getting value out of GA4 is mostly a configuration job rather than an analytics one. Which actions count as conversions, how forms and calls are tracked, how traffic sources are grouped, what gets excluded, and how consent affects collection — decide those properly and the reports start answering the only two questions most businesses actually have: where do enquiries come from, and which pages produce them.
We set GA4 up through Google Tag Manager so tracking can change without touching the site, configure Consent Mode so you're collecting data lawfully under UK GDPR and PECR, and build the handful of reports you'll genuinely open. On sites we build, this is part of launch; on sites we didn't build, we audit what's there and fix it — which is often cheaper than starting again.
What we set up
Four pieces, in this order — because reporting built on badly configured tracking is a confident answer to the wrong question.
GA4 & Tag Manager setup
A clean property and container: internal traffic excluded, cross-domain handled, data retention set, and tags managed without redeploying the site.
Conversion & revenue tracking
Forms, calls, bookings and checkouts tracked as real events — and reconciled against your CRM or Stripe so the numbers agree.
Dashboards & scheduled reports
A Looker Studio dashboard answering your actual questions, delivered to your inbox monthly — instead of a login nobody uses.
Consent, cookies & UK GDPR
A consent banner that meets UK rules, wired to Consent Mode so analytics stays lawful without throwing away all your data.
Why hire ZeroPixel for analytics work
- We measure what pays you
- Sessions and bounce rate are vanity. We instrument the events that map to revenue — enquiries, bookings, qualified leads, purchases — so the report tells you where to spend rather than how busy the site looks.
- Tracking built by the people who build the site
- Most analytics problems are front-end problems: a form that submits without firing an event, a single-page app that doesn't register route changes. Because we're developers, we fix the cause rather than papering over it in the tag manager.
- Compliance without deleting your data
- Consent rules are real and the fines are real, but a badly implemented banner can wipe out most of your measurement. Consent Mode configured properly keeps you lawful and keeps modelled data flowing.
Google Analytics — common questions
Our GA4 is already installed — is that enough?
Usually not. A default installation records page views and little else, which tells you traffic went up without telling you whether enquiries did. The work that makes it useful is defining conversions, tracking forms and calls, excluding your own team, and grouping traffic sources sensibly. An audit takes a couple of hours and tells you exactly what's missing.
Do we need a cookie banner, and will it ruin our data?
If you use analytics or advertising cookies for UK or EU visitors, yes — that's PECR and UK GDPR, not an optional nicety. It will reduce directly observed data, that's unavoidable. Google's Consent Mode softens the blow by modelling the gap from consented traffic, and a well-designed banner gets meaningfully higher consent rates than a hostile one. We set up both parts together.
Why don't GA4's numbers match our CRM or Stripe?
They never match exactly — different systems count different things, and consent, ad blockers and attribution windows all create gaps. But they should be close and move together. When they're wildly apart it's usually duplicate tags, missing events, or conversions firing on page load rather than on submission. Reconciling the two is part of how we set things up.
GA4 or something else entirely?
GA4 is free, integrates with Google Ads, and is what every marketing agency can read — that's a strong default for most businesses. Where it's weak is product analytics: understanding what users do inside an application. That's what PostHog is for, and plenty of our clients run both, with each doing the job it's good at.
How much does analytics setup cost?
An audit and clean GA4 and Tag Manager configuration with conversion tracking is a small fixed-price project, usually measured in days. Adding dashboards, ecommerce tracking or CRM reconciliation extends it. It's one of the cheapest pieces of work we do and routinely the one that changes where a marketing budget goes.
Beyond Google Analytics
A stack is a set of choices that have to work together — these are the pieces we most often pair with Google Analytics, and where we do it.
Building with Google Analytics?
Tell us what you're making — we'll reply within one working day with an honest take and a fixed quote.