What conversions and events do you want to measure?

We've been implementing Server-Side Tagging for several years now and notice that one temptation often lurks with clients: wanting to measure everything. It's like getting a new gadget and wanting to try out all the buttons. But as with many things in life, here too: less is more. In this article, we'll explain what a tagging plan is, why it's necessary for your Server-Side Tagging setup, and how to create one effectively without drowning in a sea of data.

Een tagging plan is een gestructureerde methode voor het toewijzen van tags (sleutelwoorden of labels) aan inhoud, zoals documenten, afbeeldingen, video's of digitale activa. Het doel van een tagging plan is om de organisatie, vindbaarheid en beheer van informatie te verbeteren. Hier zijn de belangrijkste aspecten van een tagging plan: * **Doel:** Wat wil je bereiken met het taggen? Wil je bijvoorbeeld de zoekfunctie verbeteren, inhoud categoriseren voor analyse, of digitale activa beter beheren? * **Tags:** Welke tags ga je gebruiken? Dit kunnen eenvoudige trefwoorden zijn, maar ook meer gestructureerde schema's zoals thesauri of taxonomieën. * **Regels en conventies:** Hoe moeten tags worden toegepast? Moet er een hoofdlettergevoeligheid zijn? Hoe om te gaan met synoniemen of meervouden? Moet er een hiërarchie in de tags zitten? * **Verantwoordelijkheden:** Wie is verantwoordelijk voor het aanmaken, beheren en toepassen van de tags? * **Tools:** Welke software of systemen ga je gebruiken voor het taggen en beheren van de tags? * **Onderhoud:** Hoe wordt het tagging plan up-to-date gehouden? Worden er periodiek herzieningen gedaan om nieuwe content-types of behoeften te accommoderen? Een goed tagging plan zorgt voor consistentie, waardoor gebruikers sneller vinden wat ze zoeken en organisaties efficiënter met hun informatie kunnen omgaan.

A tagging plan is a structured list in which you record which events you want to measure on your website. It forms the blueprint for your digital tracking strategy and ensures that you collect the data you need. Therefore, in the tagging plan, you specify which site interactions of your visitors you want to measure and share with your marketing and analytics platforms.

Events vs. site interactions

Let's first clarify two important concepts:

Site interactions These are the actions users take on your website, such as clicking a button, filling in a form, viewing a page, or completing a purchase.

Events: These are the data units that you send to your analytics and marketing platforms when a site interaction takes place. Along with these data units, the necessary user and marketing information is sent so that your platforms know which user and from which session the event originates.

In addition to the standard information linked to an event, such as marketing and user IDs, an event can also contain parameters that provide extra context about precisely what happened. For example, with a button click, you might want to know which button was clicked, on which page this occurred, or what text the clicked button contained.

Why are events used?

Analysis and marketing platforms such as Google Analytics 4, Meta Ads and Google Ads work with events because they offer a flexible way to understand user interactions. By measuring events, these platforms can:

1. Analysing user behaviour: How do visitors navigate your site? Where do they drop off?
2. Tracking conversions: Which actions lead to desired outcomes such as purchases or leads?
3. Segmenting users: Which visitors have performed (or not performed) certain actions?

All of these platforms use the same names for standard site interactions. For example, you will see differences between the names Meta Ads uses and those GA4 uses, but they both boil down to the same thing and both platforms know exactly which site interaction has occurred. You can find the differences in naming conventions between GA4 and Meta Ads in a table on our helpdesk..

That is why we also always recommend using a standard event name if possible. This is because your analytics and marketing platforms cannot decipher what custom event names mean, what type of site interaction it is, and how high the threshold is for the visitor to perform that site interaction.

Measuring the purpose of events

There are two main reasons to measure events:

1. Analyse: You want to gain insight into the behaviour of your visitors. For an e-commerce site, the typical customer journey is, for example: Landing page > View category > View product > Add product to shopping cart > Begin checkout > Complete purchase.

For a lead generation site, this journey is different, but just as important to understand. By mapping out these steps, you can see where users drop off so you know where to optimise to improve the conversion rate.

2. Marketing: Events are crucial for your marketing efforts. You use them to measure your campaign effectiveness. You want to know if your campaigns are generating conversions, whether that's purchases or leads. Your online advertising algorithms try to optimise your campaigns for the conversion you've set.

You can also use events for retargeting when you want to re-engage specific user groups, such as people who have added products to their shopping cart but have not completed the purchase. You will then need to send an ‘add_to_cart’ and ‘purchase’ event to your marketing channel so that such a user group can be created and populated. This user group is defined by visitors who triggered the ‘add_to_cart’ event in their session but not the ‘purchase’ event.

The pitfall of over-tagging

One of the biggest mistakes we see at AdPage is that our users want to measure far too much. We've received tagging plans where every button and every page on the website had to trigger a separate event. There were also dozens of different forms on different pages that were all linked to different online campaigns. This is problematic for several reasons:

1. Lack of clarity: How do you remember what all those 50+ events mean?
2. Inefficiency: You are making your implementation unnecessarily complex.
3. Data overload: your GA4 reports are becoming a mess that you can't make heads or tails of.

A smarter alternative

Instead of creating a separate event for each button or form, you can use a single event with parameters. For all matching site interactions you want to measure, you can attach dimensions to that one event. This way, you can always distinguish between different site interactions without turning your GA4 property into a confusing puzzle.

Poor approach

• homepage_contact_button_click
• product_page_buy_button_click
• about_us_contact_button_click
• ... (tens more button clicks)
• Contact Form
• introduction_form
• offer_form
• brochure_form

Better approach

• button_click (with parameters: button_name, page_location)
• generate_lead (met parameters: form_id, page_location)

In your reports, you will then see only two events (‘button_click’ & ‘generate_lead’) and can filter by the parameter “button_name” or “form_id” to analyse the specific site interaction.

How do you set up an effective tagging plan?

1. Start with your business goals. Ask yourself: what do I want to achieve with my website? Generate sales or collect leads?

2. Identify your critical conversions. These are the main goals of your website, for example:

• Voor e-commerce: aankopen
• For lead generation: form submissions (generate_lead)

3. Map the customer journey. What steps does a user take before they convert? These micro-conversions are also important to measure.

4. Choose standard events where possible. Use GA4 standard events (such as view_item, add_to_cart, begin_checkout) when applicable. These are directly integrated with reporting.

5. Keep it simple! For every event, ask yourself: “Am I really going to use this data?” If not, leave it out.

The AdPage onboarding process

At AdPage, we've developed a structured onboarding process to help you create an effective tagging plan. Here's how it works:

Step 1: eCommerce or Leadgen?

In our onboarding process, we first ask you to make a fundamental choice: is your website focused on e-commerce or lead generation?

eCommerce: If you sell products on your website, choose this option. We will then automatically set up all standard e-commerce events (if they are present in your dataLayer): view_item_list (category view), view_item (product view), add_to_cart, begin_checkout, purchase.

Leadgen: If your website is focused on generating leads, choose this option. You will then gain access to advanced Leadgen tracking with detailed customer data.

Step 2: Define custom events

After your basic selection, you can add custom events:

For e-commerce websites, this is optional but can be useful for specific interactions that do not fall under standard e-commerce events.

For lead generation websites, it is required to fill in at least one custom event, usually the generate_lead event for form submissions.

Hoe vul je een aangepast event in?

When creating a custom event, you will be asked for the following information:

1. Name: The name of your event. Use a clear, descriptive name such as generate_lead, newsletter_signup, or download_whitepaper. Preferably, use standard GA4 event names where possible.
2. Description: Here you explain where site interaction can be found. For example: “Contact form on the contact page” or “Newsletter sign-up form in the footer of every page”.
3. Dimensions: These are the extra parameters you want to include with the event so you can filter on them in your marketing or analytical channel. For example, form_id to know which form was completed or download_name for tracking which whitepaper was downloaded.
4. Destination: Here you specify which platforms (in addition to GA4) the event should be sent to. Think of Meta Ads or Google Ads for conversion tracking and remarketing.
5. Mark as conversion event: Tick this box if the event represents a key conversion, such as a lead or a purchase.

Custom event example: generate_lead

• Naam: generate_lead
• Description: Contact form on the contact page: domainname.nl/contact & demo request form on the demo page: domainname.nl/demo
• Dimension: form_id (to distinguish between different forms)
• Destination: GA4, Meta Ads, Google Ads
• Conversion event: Yes

With this approach, you have one clear conversion event (generate_lead) with a parameter (formulier_id) to distinguish between different types of leads, instead of separate events for each form.

Conclusion

A good tagging plan isn't about quantity, but quality. By strategically choosing which events you measure and utilising parameters, you keep your data organised and useful. At AdPage, we're happy to help you create an effective tagging plan as part of our Server-Side Tagging implementation. Our onboarding is specifically designed to make this process as simple as possible, allowing you to get started quickly with relevant and actionable data. After all, you don't want data overload, but insights that help you make better decisions.