GA4 for Small Organisations
A practical course in Google Analytics 4 for small UK organisations. You'll learn how GA4 counts visits and actions, check your tracking is working, track the enquiries, calls and bookings that matter, handle cookie consent under UK rules, see where your visitors come from, and build a simple monthly report in Looker Studio that turns the numbers into decisions.
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A practical course in Google Analytics 4 for small UK organisations. You'll learn how GA4 counts visits and actions, check your tracking is working, track the enquiries, calls and bookings that matter, handle cookie consent under UK rules, see where your visitors come from, and build a simple monthly report in Looker Studio that turns the numbers into decisions.
The course has 8 modules, each with a short video, a written lesson, an exercise, a quiz and at least one worksheet (12 worksheets in all, in Word and PDF).
Who this course is for
People who look after the website or marketing of a small UK business or charity. No technical background needed.
Course content
Module 1: How GA4 Thinks
By the end of this module, students can explain what GA4 is counting, read its three core metrics correctly, and say why GA4 never matches their other tools. Everything later in the course builds on this.
about 45 minutes, plus a 20-minute exercise on their own account.
What you'll be able to do
- Explain why GA4 treats every interaction as an event, and name the events their site already collects.
- Tell the difference between users, sessions and engaged sessions, and know which to report.
- Read engagement rate and bounce rate without being misled.
- Explain what a key event is and why their account needs some.
- Give five reasons GA4's numbers differ from other tools, and decide when a difference is a problem.
Module 2: Is Your Tracking Working?
By the end of this module, students know whether their GA4 data can be trusted, and have fixed the settings that most often spoil it. Every later module assumes the tracking passes these checks.
about 50 minutes of lessons, plus a 30-minute health check on their own account.
What you'll be able to do
- Confirm GA4 is installed, sending data, and present on every page of their site.
- Test their own site live using the Realtime report.
- Use Tag Assistant and DebugView to see exactly which events fire, and when.
- Check and correct five settings that quietly damage data: data retention, internal traffic, unwanted referrals, time zone and user access.
- Recognise the common signs of broken tracking in everyday reports.
Module 3: Tracking Enquiries, Calls and Bookings
This is the module where GA4 starts measuring results, not just traffic. By the end, students have their most valuable actions (enquiries, calls, emails, bookings) recorded as key events, and have tested each one.
about 60 minutes of lessons, plus 45 to 90 minutes setting up and testing on their own site. It's the longest module, and the one that pays back the course fee.
What you'll be able to do
- Write a simple tracking plan: which actions matter, how each will be detected, and what to call it.
- Turn a thank-you page into a key event without touching the website.
- Track phone and email link clicks using Google Tag Manager.
- Choose the right approach for forms that don't have a thank-you page.
- Mark events as key events, choose a counting method, and test them before relying on them.
- Decide how to handle bookings, donations and payments on third-party platforms.
Module 4: Cookie Consent and UK Privacy Rules
By the end of this module, students understand what UK law requires before GA4 collects data, can tell whether their cookie banner works, and have set GA4 up to avoid collecting personal information. It also explains the single biggest reason GA4 under-counts (Module 1, Lesson 1.6).
about 50 minutes of lessons, plus a 30-minute check of their own site.
What you'll be able to do
- Explain in plain English which UK rules apply to analytics cookies, and what changed in February 2026.
- Describe the conditions of the new analytics exception, and why its application to standard GA4 is not clear-cut.
- Recognise a cookie banner that meets the rules, and one that doesn't.
- Explain Google consent mode and the difference between its basic and advanced versions.
- Test whether their own banner actually stops and starts GA4 correctly.
- Check GA4's privacy settings and keep personal information out of their data.
Module 5: Where Your Visitors Come From
With trustworthy tracking (Module 2), key events (Module 3) and consent sorted (Module 4), students can now answer the question every marketer is asked: which of our marketing actually works? This module explains how GA4 decides where each visit came from, how to make your own campaigns show up properly, and how to read the reports that compare them.
about 55 minutes of lessons, plus a 30-minute exercise.
What you'll be able to do
- Explain source, medium, campaign and channel, and how they relate.
- Describe how GA4 sorts visits into channels, and why some land in Direct or Unassigned.
- Choose between the User acquisition and Traffic acquisition reports.
- Tag email, social and print campaign links with UTM parameters, using a consistent naming guide.
- Read acquisition and landing page reports to compare channels on results, not just visits.
- Link Search Console and Google Ads, and explain attribution in plain English.
Module 6: Explorations, Funnels and Paths
Standard reports answer the common questions. Explorations answer your questions: which pages lead to enquiries, where people give up on the way to your contact form, and what route they take before booking. This is the module where students move from reading GA4 to investigating with it.
about 60 minutes of lessons, plus 30 to 45 minutes building their own funnel and path.
What you'll be able to do
- Decide when a question needs an exploration rather than a standard report, and know the limits that apply.
- Find their way around the Explore workspace: variables, settings and the canvas.
- Build a free-form exploration to see which pages and channels lead to key events.
- Build a funnel exploration showing where visitors drop out on the way to an enquiry.
- Use a path exploration to see the routes people take before or after a page.
- Use segments to compare groups of visitors, and share an exploration with colleagues.
Module 7: Your Monthly Report in Looker Studio
By now students know what's working. This module turns that into something their boss, trustees or clients will actually read: a one-page monthly report that updates itself, built in Google's free Looker Studio and sent automatically by email.
about 50 minutes of lessons, plus 60 to 90 minutes building the report the first time. After that, it takes minutes each month.
What you'll be able to do
- Plan a one-page report around their audience and a handful of numbers that matter.
- Connect GA4 to Looker Studio, and understand the limits that come with it.
- Build scorecards, a trend chart and channel tables that compare with the previous period.
- Lay the report out clearly, in their organisation's colours, with space for commentary.
- Share the report safely and schedule it to arrive by email each month.
- Choose a simpler alternative inside GA4 if Looker Studio is more than they need.
Module 8: Turning Data into Decisions
The first seven modules gave students accurate data and a clear monthly report. This last module is about the part that pays for all of it: using the data to decide what to do next, and checking whether it worked. It's the shortest on GA4 menus and the longest on judgement.
about 50 minutes of lessons, plus 45 minutes for the first monthly review and a 90-day plan.
What you'll be able to do
- Run a 30-minute monthly review that ends in a decision, not just a report.
- Turn vague goals ("more traffic") into specific questions GA4 can answer.
- Tell a real change from normal ups and downs, including seasonality and small numbers.
- Test one website or marketing change at a time, and record it so the effect can be measured.
- Follow three worked examples from data to decision.
- Write a 90-day plan they can keep going after the course.
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