Google Analytics 4 for Cardiff Small Businesses: A Plain-English Setup Guide

If you installed Google Analytics on your Cardiff business website a few years ago and assumed that was job done — you may be in for a surprise. The old version (Universal Analytics) was switched off in July 2023. If you haven't migrated to Google Analytics 4 (GA4), you've likely been flying blind ever since.

And even if you have GA4 set up, there's a reasonable chance you've opened the dashboard once, felt mildly overwhelmed, and quietly closed the tab.

This guide is for Cardiff and Wales business owners who want to actually use their website data — not just feel virtuous about having it. We'll walk through the setup, explain what actually matters, and show you how to turn numbers into decisions.

Why This Matters More Than You Think

Your website is generating data every single day. Every visitor, every click, every contact form submission — it's all trackable. Without Analytics, you're guessing:

• Which of your marketing channels is actually sending you enquiries?
• Is your blog post about "plumbers in Cardiff" bringing in traffic — or is nobody reading it?
• Do mobile visitors bounce straight off, or do they convert at the same rate as desktop?

GA4 answers these questions. Once you understand the basics, it takes about ten minutes a week to review what's working and where you're losing people. For a Cardiff SME spending money on a website, that ten minutes is arguably the highest-ROI activity in your marketing week.

Step One: Set Up GA4 Correctly

If you don't have GA4 yet (or aren't sure), here's how to get started.

Create a Google Analytics account: Go to analytics.google.com and sign in with your business Google account. Click Start measuring, give your account a name (usually your business name), and work through the setup wizard.

Create a GA4 Property: When prompted, select GA4 (it's now the default). You'll be asked for your website URL and industry category. Don't overthink this — you can adjust later.

Add the tracking code to your website: GA4 gives you a "Measurement ID" that looks like G-XXXXXXXXXX. How you add this to your site depends on your platform:

• WordPress: Install the "Site Kit by Google" plugin — it handles the connection automatically
• Wix or Squarespace: Both have built-in GA4 integration in their marketing/analytics settings
• Shopify: Add via the Google & YouTube channel app
• Custom site: Add the provided <script> snippet before the closing </head> tag on every page

Verify it's working: In GA4, click Reports > Realtime. Then open your website in a new browser tab. Within a minute or two, you should see yourself appear as an active user. If you do — it's working.

Step Two: Understand What You're Looking At

GA4 uses different terminology from the old Universal Analytics. Here's what you actually need to know.

Users vs Sessions:

• Users = individual people who visited your site
• Sessions = visits (one person can have multiple sessions)

If you had 500 users and 700 sessions last month, that means some people visited more than once — usually a good sign.

Engagement Rate (not Bounce Rate): GA4 replaced the old Bounce Rate with Engagement Rate — the percentage of sessions where someone spent more than 10 seconds on your site, viewed more than one page, or completed a conversion. A healthy engagement rate for a Cardiff service business is typically above 50%. If yours is 20%, people are landing and leaving immediately — which means either the wrong people are finding you, or your page isn't delivering what they expected.

Events and Conversions: Everything in GA4 is an "event." A page view is an event. A button click is an event. A form submission is an event. You can mark specific events as Conversions — which are the actions that actually matter to your business (enquiry form submitted, phone number clicked, booking made).

Setting up conversions properly is the single most important GA4 task for a Cardiff SME. Without it, you can see your traffic but not whether it's doing anything useful.

Step Three: Set Up Conversions That Actually Matter

Here are the conversions most Cardiff small businesses should be tracking:

Contact form submissions: If your site is built on WordPress with Contact Form 7 or WPForms, there are GA4 plugins and settings that automatically fire an event when a form is submitted. In GA4, go to Admin > Events, find the event (often form_submit or similar), and click the toggle to mark it as a Conversion.

Phone number clicks: On mobile, a click-to-call link is often how customers contact you. You can track these as events using Google Tag Manager (slightly more technical) or via certain WordPress plugins. If your web developer set this up, ask them to confirm it's working in GA4.

Thank-you page visits: The simplest approach: set up your contact form to redirect to a /thank-you page after submission. Then in GA4, create an event that fires when someone views that URL. Mark it as a Conversion. Done.

E-commerce purchases: If you sell online, GA4 has built-in e-commerce tracking. Most platforms (WooCommerce, Shopify, Squarespace Commerce) have GA4 e-commerce integrations that track revenue automatically.

Step Four: The Five Reports That Actually Matter

GA4 has dozens of reports. Here are the five worth checking for a Cardiff SME:

1. Traffic Acquisition (Reports > Acquisition > Traffic Acquisition) This shows you where your visitors are coming from: Organic Search (Google), Direct (typed your URL), Social (Facebook, Instagram, etc.), Referral (other websites linking to you), or Paid Search (Google Ads).

For most Cardiff businesses, Organic Search should be your biggest channel. If Direct is your biggest channel, it often means your tracking isn't set up properly.

2. Landing Pages (Reports > Engagement > Landing Pages) This shows which pages people arrive on first. Your homepage will likely top the list — but look further down. Is your blog post about "electrician Cardiff" getting traffic? Is your services page picking up search visitors? This tells you where your SEO is working.

3. Conversions (Reports > Engagement > Conversions) Once you've set up conversions (step three above), this report shows how many completed the action you care about — and, crucially, which traffic source sent them.

If Organic Search sends 400 visitors but 0 conversions, and Social sends 50 visitors but 5 conversions — you know where to focus.

4. Device Category (Explore > Free Form, then add Device Category as a dimension) Splits your data by mobile, tablet, and desktop. For most Cardiff local businesses, 60–70% of traffic is now mobile. If your mobile engagement rate is dramatically lower than desktop, your site may have a mobile experience problem worth fixing.

5. Geographic Location (Reports > User Attributes > User by Country / City) Confirm that your traffic is actually coming from Cardiff, Wales, and the UK. If you're a Cardiff-only plumber and 40% of your traffic is from the USA — something is wrong with either your SEO targeting or your site's content.

Step Five: Connect GA4 to Google Search Console

This is a five-minute job that adds a huge amount of value. Google Search Console shows you which search terms people used to find your site — data GA4 doesn't have on its own.

1. Set up Google Search Console at search.google.com/search-console and verify ownership of your site
2. In GA4, go to Admin > Property Settings > Search Console Links
3. Follow the prompts to connect the two accounts

Once linked, you can see GA4 data alongside Search Console data — combining traffic metrics with the actual keywords that drove the visits.

Common GA4 Mistakes Cardiff Businesses Make

Not filtering out their own visits. Every time you visit your own site, you're inflating your traffic numbers. In GA4, go to Admin > Data Streams > your stream > Configure Tag Settings > Define internal traffic, and add your office IP address. Then filter it out under Admin > Data Filters.

Ignoring the date comparison. The default GA4 view shows you numbers without context. Always compare to the same period last month, or the same period last year. A drop in traffic means nothing without a baseline.

Treating all traffic as equal. 1,000 visitors from Cardiff searching "emergency plumber Cardiff" is worth more than 5,000 visitors from a viral Facebook post with no intent to buy. Focus on qualified traffic — people likely to become customers.

Never checking it. Setting up GA4 and never looking at it is, unfortunately, the most common mistake of all. Block 20 minutes once a month in your calendar. Even a cursory review will surface something useful.

What to Do with the Data

The point of GA4 isn't to stare at graphs — it's to make better decisions. Here's a simple monthly review process for Cardiff SMEs:

1. Check conversions first. Are enquiries up or down on last month? On last year?
2. Check your top traffic sources. Are the channels you're investing in (SEO, social, ads) actually sending people?
3. Spot any significant drops. A page that lost 60% of its traffic may have been hit by a Google algorithm update — worth investigating.
4. Identify your best-performing content. Which blog posts or pages are driving the most conversions? Do more of that.
5. Note one thing to improve. Just one. Maybe it's a landing page with a high drop-off rate, or a channel that's underperforming. Pick something and fix it before next month's review.

Getting Help with GA4 in Cardiff

If this all feels like a lot — or if you've inherited a GA4 setup from a previous developer and have no idea if it's tracking correctly — a quick audit from a Cardiff digital agency can save you months of bad data.

At Caversham Digital, we set up GA4 properly, configure meaningful conversions, and give Cardiff and Wales businesses a monthly snapshot they can actually act on. We also offer one-off GA4 audits for businesses that want to check their setup is accurate before making any marketing decisions based on it.

Because data is only useful if it's right.

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Caversham Digital is a digital marketing and web agency based in Cardiff, helping Welsh SMEs build online presence that actually delivers results. Get in touch to discuss your GA4 setup or broader digital marketing strategy.