What GA4 does well, and where it stops at the form
What GA4 is built for
Google Analytics 4 is the current version of Google’s web analytics platform, launched in October 2020. It replaced Universal Analytics, the standard since 2012. Where Universal Analytics was built around sessions, GA4 is built around events, which gives a more detailed picture of how visitors interact with your websites and apps.
GA4 was designed for analytics in a privacy-minded world, with better cross-device tracking, automatic insights and machine learning. It also works closely with Google’s advertising platforms, so marketers can base campaign decisions on the same data.
It is the leading analytics platform for good reasons. Digital marketers use its tracking and reporting to optimise campaigns and return on investment. Data analysts value its flexible data model, with custom events and parameters for deeper analysis. Its strength is tracking interactions across websites and apps: engagement, revenue and retention.
Flexible, and that is exactly the trap
That same flexibility becomes a trap once you want to optimise your forms. Two assumptions cause most of the trouble.
“GA4 is free, so it is cheaper than a form analytics tool.” GA4 does not offer form analytics out of the box. An expert has to build specific tags, triggers and variables in Google Tag Manager for every form and every field, plus AJAX listeners when the page does not refresh after a submit. With several forms on your site, that is not a job for an afternoon. The first setup takes days.
“GA4 is set and forget.” Form analytics in GA4 is a custom build, so it needs regular checks to keep the data accurate. Every change to a form means reviewing all the custom events behind it, to confirm they still measure the right thing. That work takes skilled people, and their time has a price. Even with GA4, keeping form analytics running costs money every month.
Put together: form analytics in GA4 is complex to set up, risks inconsistent data, needs ongoing maintenance and comes with costs nobody budgeted for.
The numbers, and the reason behind them
For CRO specialists, combining quantitative and qualitative insight explains far more about the friction in a form than numbers alone. GA4 tracks figures such as conversion rates and drop-off points well, but it cannot show why prospects behave the way they do.
Adding a session replay tool like Hotjar lets you watch real sessions and see the frustration and confusion for yourself. That combination makes the analysis deeper and the optimisation sharper. But Hotjar samples: it records a random share of the sessions. So a GA4 metric rarely leads you straight to the replays behind it. In Exatom, that link is standard: every metric opens the sessions that make it up.
Setup in minutes instead of days
Where GA4 needs expert work before it shows anything about a form, Exatom needs one event tag on every page, which you can place through Google Tag Manager.
- The tag finds every form automatically, with all its fields, their names and their attributes.
- You only choose which forms you want to see in your reports.
- Several forms on the same page are kept apart, and the same form on several pages is merged into one report.
A marketer can start with Exatom in minutes, without detailed knowledge of Google Tag Manager.
It’s very easy to start with Exatom. We just used Google Tag Manager to put the tags on the website and our forms were found automatically. Insights are very detailed: we don’t get this from tools like Google Analytics or Hotjar.
Mike S.
Founder, review on G2
The core: form and field metrics
On form and field metrics, Exatom goes into the detail that CRO specialists and product owners need. Next to what GA4 tracks, such as form sessions, start rate and submits, and custom metrics like the error rate and interactions, Exatom adds:
- the failed submit rate
- autofill use, the fields the browser fills in by itself
- drop-offs before the start, drop-offs after the start and the total drop-off
The difference is clearest at field level. GA4 cannot show, per field, the interaction time next to the hesitation time, the order in which prospects fill in the fields, blank rates or autofill rates. Out of the box, GA4 also counts every submit as a conversion. Exatom counts a click on the submit button as a submit, and only a successful submit as a conversion.
GA4 stays the right tool for your traffic and acquisition. For what happens inside your forms and checkouts, Exatom gives you a far more complete set of metrics, and the comparison table above sets it out row by row.
