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      Google Analytics 4 (GA4): General Information

      Learn more about how Google Analytics can help you understand your business and customer journey.

      What is GA4?

      Google Analytics 4, or GA4, is an analytics service that tracks and reports website traffic and user behavior, helping you understand their guests, and measure your parks website and booking site performance, so you can optimize marketing strategies. With this data at your disposal, you can create more targeted marketing efforts based on your guests behavior.

      Why use this tool?

      With insight into your guests behavior during their booking journey on your website and Campspot booking site, you can:

      • Improve your site performance
      • Optimize marketing campaigns
      • Increase the number of reservations you're booking
      • Make data-driven decisions for the success of your campground.
      Specifically, you can:
      1. Gain Visitor insights: Google Analytics allows you to gain valuable insights into the visitors on your website and Campspot booking site. You can track metrics such as the number of visitors, their location, the devices they use, and their browsing behavior. Understanding these metrics can help you tailor your marketing strategies, events, and offerings, and improve your website's user experience.
        1. Example: In looking at your geographic reports, you find out that many of your website visitors are accessing your site from further away than expected. Using this information, you could decide to run a promotion or add a directions section to your website to help them justify or ease the extra travel.
      2. Track website performance: Google Analytics provides data on your website's performance, including page load times, bounce rates, and conversion rates. By analyzing this data, you can identify areas for improvement, optimize your website's performance, and enhance the overall user experience.
      3. Enhance marketing initiative and ROI analysis: If you run digital marketing campaigns to promote your campground, Google Analytics can help you measure their effectiveness. You can track the performance of different marketing channels, identify which campaigns are generating the most traffic or conversions, and make data-driven decisions to optimize your marketing efforts.

        1. Example: Say you sent out an email newsletter promoting a special summer discount on bookings on a certain weekend. By analyzing the campaign data in Google Analytics, you can determine the number of visitors who clicked on the email link, how many of them made reservations, and how much revenue was generated from your effort in sending out that campaign.

      4. Set goal tracking and conversion optimization: Setting up goals in Google Analytics enables you to track specific actions on your website, such as booking a reservation, signing up for a newsletter, or completing a contact form. By monitoring these conversions, you can identify any bottlenecks in your sales funnel and implement strategies to improve conversion rates.

        1. Example: Let's say you're working with a local marketing firm and as part of your marketing strategy, they are retargeting visitors who have previously visited your website with digital ads. With Google Analytics, you can track conversions from this campaign and understand if it's successful, or if that budget would be better used on other marketing channels.

      What does it cost me?

      Nothing! While Google does offer the ability to run paid marketing campaigns through their advertising platforms, setting up analytics on your website and Campspot booking page is free.

      Is it secure?

      Google takes security seriously and employs industry-standard practices to safeguard the data collected through Google Analytics. For more information, visit Google's page on Safeguarding data.

      How do I use it?

      There are thousands of different applications, opportunities, and metrics you can access in using Google Analytics. Campspot supports a wide variety of these, but as the use is dependent on your goals as a business owner, we have provided some instructions on setting up the basics that will get you some of the most impactful insights you'll need.

      Via the links below, you'll find out how to set up:

      • Standard Google Analytics 4 configuration: this implementation puts the base Google Analytics code on your website, and starts to populate your account with basic metrics and reports
      • Page view tracking: this allows you to see behavior by each page accessed on your website and Campspot booking site. Page views are also part of your standard configuration, but following these instructions is recommended, as the standard GA4 tracking does not support Campspot's page view tracking as a single-page application.
      • Purchase tracking: this allows you to see reservations that were made on your Campspot booking page in Google Analytics, and pair them with insights like their revenue generated, the marketing campaign or website they originated from, and individual items that were booked that make up your overall online booking numbers.

      Setup

      Step 1:

      Install Google Tag Manager

      Step 2:

      Either Import the configuration (recommended)

      GA4 Import GTM configuration

      Or manually install the GTM configuration.

      GA4 Manual GTM installation