How To Create Drop-Off Funnels With Google Analytics (GA4) and Growform

Ever wondered which steps are causing people to bounce from your form? This guide is for you!

We'll dive into the Growform settings you need to start tracking events, as well as how to visualize everything in GA4.

Let's get started...

1.) Before setup

This guide assumes you've already got GA4 set up on the page Growform is embedded on. If you haven't already got GA4 set up and tracking on your website, you should go ahead and set it up now.

Enabling the Growform<>GA4 integration will not set up a new GA4 base tag - rather, it will fire events at an existing GA4 installation on your website so you can track form fills on the tool you already use to analyse your traffic. It won't interfere with your existing GA4 installation.

2.) Get your form ID from Growform

Note down your Growform form ID, which will be useful in filtering events relating to a particular form.

To get your form ID, open your form in the builder and copy the characters after /build/ in the URL:

The form ID is always 24 characters long, and can also be found in your embed code.

3.) Grab your Measurement ID from GA4

Now, we need to get the Measurement ID from Google Analytics. To get this, log into GA4 and go to the admin area. At the time of writing, this is denoted by a small cog in the bottom-left corner of the screen.

In the admin area, navigate to "Data streams":

If you haven't set one up already, you'll need to create a data stream of the type "web".

Select the data stream for your website, and copy the "Measurement ID" with the provided button:

4.) Paste the measurement ID into Growform

Now we have the Measurement ID, we need to add it to Growform so the tool can start firing events.

Open your form in the Growform builder and head to "Edit form settings" in the top toolbar.

Then, hit "Tracking & Tagging", and find the "Tracking ID" field before pasting your measurement ID in the box:

Don't forget to hit "Save form settings" at the bottom of the page!

5.) Start receiving events!

At this point, Growform will now be sending "events" to GA4 each time a user interacts with your form, thanks to our one-click integration.

The exact events are as follows:

• On loading the form: "growformFormViewed" *
• On step completion: "growformCompletedStep"
• On form completion: "growformCompletedForm".

Each of these events has a "formId" parameter, which is the unique ID of your form.

The "growformCompletedStep" also contains a "stepNumber", which is the number of the step the user completed.

You can see events appear live in GA4's Realtime report. To access this, go to "Reports" > "Real-time" in Google Analytics:

In the real-time report, you should start to see events from Growform appearing:

(We are aware that "growformFormViewed" breaks the naming convention of "growformActionNoun" - but have decided to keep this in place to avoid disruption to existing customer analytics).

6.) Set up custom dimensions for your funnel reports

Before setting up a funnel report, it's essential to create two custom dimensions. These let you slice and dice data in Google Analytics and tell Google to start processing our custom event data.

In GA4's "admin" area, find "Custom definitions". It's accessible from two places in the admin area at time of writing:

On the custom definitions page, hit "Create custom dimension":

Create the following two custom dimensions:

Dimension name: formId

Description: Form ID of a growform event

Event parameter: formId

—

Dimension name: stepNumber

Description: Step number of a growform event

Event parameter: stepNumber

Once you've created the custom dimensions, your screen should look something like this:

7.) Set up a funnel report

Now custom dimensions are in place and events are being received, you can set up a funnel report to view how many users "drop off" between steps.

Go to "Explore" in GA4's left-hand panel, and create a blank report:

Under "technique", choose "Funnel exploration":

Hit the pencil icon next to steps to edit the steps:

Now, you'll create a step for each step of your form. The idea is to end up with funnel steps in GA4 that look like this:

Here's how:

Choose a name for your first step:

Hit "add new condition" to give your first step a condition, which will be that that the "growformCompletedStep" has fired:

Search "growformCompletedStep" and choose the corresponding event:

Now you've selected the correct event, let's restrict this only to event fires on step 1. Hit "Add parameter":

Choose "Custom", and then "stepNumber":

Set the "Condition" to "exactly matches (=)", and enter "1" into the box, without quotes:

If you'll be tracking more than one form, you should also restrict the criteria to events where the formId matches the one you copied down on step 2:

Hit "Apply", and repeat this process for every step of your form, except for the final step.

Finally, add a step called "Completed form" that checks for events with an event name of "growformFormComplete".

Your final setup should look like this:

8.) View your funnel

Voila! Your new funnel should look something like this:

Troubleshooting

Encountered a snag while setting up or viewing your funnel? Here are a few common issues and how to fix them:

Issue 1: Seeing less form completions than you expect

• Users vs events: Understand that GA4's funnels are measured on a per-user basis - so if you return to your form several times, you'll count as one completion up until the latest step.
• Check date range: GA4's date range on the funnel view doesn't include today, so you may be looking at data from a few days ago.
• Account for ad-blockers: Some users will have ad-blockers, extensions and policies that intefere with GA4 tracking, so don't expect the numbers to add up perfectly.

Issue 1: Events not appearing in GA4

• Check Measurement ID: Double-check that you've pasted the correct Measurement ID into Growform and hit "Save". You should be able to see the Measurement ID in the Growform tracking & tagging page under "settings".
• Verify GA4 Setup: Confirm that GA4 is properly set up and receiving data on your website - Growform won't install the tag for you. If GA4 isn't already correctly installed, Growform events cannot be tracked.
• Wait a few days: GA4 takes 24-48 hours to start processing custom parameters, which this guide relies upon. Complete up to step 7 and then wait for 48 hours before continuing with the rest of the guide.

Issue 2: Events appearing, but funnel not showing correctly

• Check Form ID: Make sure your funnel is configured to restrict events to the correct form ID (or none at all if you're only tracking one form).
• Review Event Configuration: If step numbers or form IDs aren't appearing as expected, go back and ensure that the custom dimensions for formId and stepNumber have been set up correctly in GA4.

Issue 3: Funnel steps not adding up to form submissions

You will likely see different (probably less) form completions than the number of completions you see inside Growform. Google Analytics is often blocked by browser extensions, privacy settings and workplace policies. This is completely normal, as no tracking on the Internet is foolproof - especially in the age of ad-blockers.

Even with adblockers, the % of blocked events should be consistent across steps, which means this data will still be valuable to get an idea of which steps are most likely to cause users to leave the journey.