Estimated reading time: 3 minutes
Originally published June 2, 2023.
GA4: A Guide To Google Analytics 4 For Photographers
Google Analytics 4 reporting tells wedding photographers which marketing actually books clients. This guide covers the reporting side of GA4: key events, UTM tracking for listing profiles like The Knot and WeddingWire, custom dimensions, audiences and segments, report filters, and cross-domain tracking for booking tools like Dubsado.
One thing this guide does not repeat: installation steps. The full setup process, including the consent-safe way to load GA4 on a Showit site, lives in How To Set Up Google Analytics 4 On Your Showit Site. Set up your property there first, then come back here to put the data to work.
In This Guide
- What Is Google Analytics 4
- GA4 Events And Key Events
- Set Up GA4 The Consent-Safe Way
- Track Where Inquiries Come From With UTMs
- Cross-Domain Tracking For Booking And Delivery Tools
- Custom Dimensions In GA4
- Audiences And Segments In GA4
- Use Report Filters To Refine Data
- Link Google Ads To GA4
- GA4 Recap
What Is Google Analytics 4
Google Analytics 4 is Google’s current analytics platform. It replaced Universal Analytics, which stopped processing data in July 2023. If you still have reporting habits, bookmarks, or tutorials built around Universal Analytics, they no longer apply. GA4 is the only version Google runs.
GA4 records visitor behavior as events. A pageview is an event. A scroll is an event. A click on your contact button is an event. Events combine into user journeys, so you can follow a visitor from the blog post that brought them in to the inquiry form they submitted. For a photographer, that journey answers the questions that matter: which galleries hold attention, which pages produce inquiries, and which traffic sources send the visitors who actually book.
GA4 Events And Key Events
GA4 tracks two types of events. Automatically collected events cover pageviews, scrolls, outbound clicks, and file downloads with no extra configuration. Custom events cover the actions you define yourself.
The events that matter most to your business get marked as key events. Key events are what Google previously called conversions; Google renamed them in 2024, and older tutorials that say “conversions” mean the same thing. The most practical key event for a photographer is the inquiry: a visitor submits your contact form and lands on your /thank-you/ page. Mark that page-path event as a key event and your reports will count inquiries, not just traffic.
To create one, open GA4 Admin, select Events under the Property column, and create an event triggered by your thank-you page path. Then toggle it as a key event. The step-by-step walkthrough, including the consent note about why key event counts run below your inbox count, is in the Showit GA4 setup guide.
Set Up GA4 The Consent-Safe Way
A caution before the reporting sections. Many GA4 tutorials, including an earlier version of this post, tell you to copy the gtag.js snippet and paste it into your website HTML, or to drop your measurement ID into your site builder’s built-in analytics field. If your site runs a cookie consent banner, both shortcuts bypass it. The tracking code fires before your visitor answers the banner, which conflicts with the privacy laws the banner exists to satisfy and makes your published Cookie Policy inaccurate.
The correct install loads GA4 through the consent banner, so tracking starts only after a visitor consents. How To Set Up Google Analytics 4 On Your Showit Site documents the full process: creating the account and property, setting up a web data stream with Enhanced Measurement, finding your measurement ID, connecting GA4 through a Termageddon and Usercentrics banner, and verifying that nothing fires before consent.
Track Where Inquiries Come From With UTMs
Does The Knot or WeddingWire drive more inquiries? Wedding photographers ask this constantly, and GA4 can answer it once your listing profiles carry UTM parameters.
UTM parameters are tags appended to a URL that name the source of a click. Point your listing profile links at your website with UTMs attached, and GA4 records exactly which platform sent each visitor. Read the results under Reports, then Acquisition, then Traffic acquisition, using the Session source and Session campaign dimensions.
Copy these templates and replace YOURDOMAIN.com with your website address:
| Platform | UTM Template |
|---|---|
| The Knot | https://YOURDOMAIN.com?utm_source=TheKnot&utm_medium=profile&utm_campaign=main_contact_button |
| WeddingWire | https://YOURDOMAIN.com?utm_source=WeddingWire&utm_medium=profile&utm_campaign=main_contact_button |
| Style Me Pretty | https://YOURDOMAIN.com?utm_source=StyleMePretty&utm_medium=profile&utm_campaign=main_contact_button |
| Google Business Profile | https://YOURDOMAIN.com?utm_source=GoogleBusinessProfile&utm_medium=profile&utm_campaign=main_contact_button |
| https://YOURDOMAIN.com?utm_source=Instagram&utm_medium=profile&utm_campaign=main_contact_button |
To build your own variations, use Google’s GA4 Campaign URL Builder. Keep the naming consistent: pick one spelling per source and hold it, because GA4 treats TheKnot and The-Knot as two different sources.
Cross-Domain Tracking For Booking And Delivery Tools
A photography business rarely lives on one domain. A visitor reads your site, opens your Dubsado or HoneyBook proposal on that platform’s domain, and books there. Without cross-domain measurement, GA4 counts that visitor twice and loses the thread between the visit and the booking.
Common cross-domain cases for photographers: pricing subdomains, CRM and booking tools such as Dubsado and HoneyBook, photo delivery platforms, and course platforms such as Teachable or Kajabi.
To set up cross-domain measurement:
- In GA4 Admin, click Data Streams in the Property column.
- Click your web data stream, then Configure tag settings at the bottom.
- In the Settings section, click Configure your domains.
- Choose a match type and enter each domain you want to include, such as your Dubsado client portal domain.
- Add a condition per domain; conditions evaluate with OR logic. Click Save.
Google documents the details in its cross-domain measurement reference.
Custom Dimensions In GA4
Dimensions are the attributes GA4 uses to slice your data. Standard dimensions cover most photographer questions without any configuration:
| Dimension | What it answers |
|---|---|
| Session source / medium | Which platform or referral sent the visitor |
| Landing page | Which page brought the visitor in |
| Region | Where inquiries come from, useful for destination work |
| Device category | Whether visitors browse your galleries on phone or desktop |
When you need an attribute GA4 does not collect on its own, register a custom dimension. In Admin, under Data display, select Custom definitions and create a dimension tied to an event parameter you send. A wedding photographer might record which gallery a download came from, or which service page produced an inquiry.
Audiences And Segments In GA4
Audiences group visitors by shared behavior: everyone who viewed your wedding galleries, everyone who reached the contact page without submitting, everyone from a specific city. Audiences feed remarketing in Google Ads and comparisons in your reports.
To create an audience:
- In GA4 Admin, in the Property column, click Audiences, then New audience.
- Define the parameters yourself, start from a template, or select a suggested audience and adjust it.
Google notes: “When you create a new audience, it can take 24-48 hours for the audience to accumulate new users.” Build audiences before you need them, not the week of a campaign.
Segments do similar work inside Explorations: they filter an analysis to one visitor group so you can compare, for example, mobile visitors against desktop visitors on your pricing page. Create a segment inside any Exploration by clicking the plus icon in the Segments panel.
Use Report Filters To Refine Data
Filters narrow a report to the data that answers your question. Four ways to put them to work:
- Identify your key metrics first. Decide what you track before you filter: inquiries, gallery engagement, time on pricing pages. A filter without a question produces noise.
- Filter by traffic source. Isolate one source, such as utm-tagged listing traffic, to judge what each platform sends beyond raw clicks.
- Stack conditions. Combine date range, source, and device filters in one view to answer specific questions, like how mobile visitors from The Knot behaved last quarter.
- Save what works. Customize a report once, save it, and reread the same view monthly instead of rebuilding it. Report data can also surface design and user experience problems, not just marketing answers.
Useful dimensions for filter conditions include Session source / medium, Session campaign, Landing page plus query string, Device, Region, Browser, and Page path. Google lists every available dimension in its dimensions and metrics reference.
Link Google Ads To GA4
If you run Google Ads, link it to GA4 in Admin under Product links. The link imports your key events into Google Ads for bidding, shares your GA4 audiences for remarketing, and reports ad performance alongside site behavior so you can see which campaigns produce inquiries rather than clicks.
GA4 Recap
Set up GA4 through your consent banner using How To Set Up Google Analytics 4 On Your Showit Site. Mark your inquiry as a key event. Tag your listing profiles with the UTM templates above. Add cross-domain measurement for your booking tools. Then read your reports monthly with the dimensions and filters covered here, and pair what you learn with the customer journey approach to SEO to decide what to publish and repair next.
Need help with GA4 or SEO on your Showit site? Contact Morris & Co. Marketing to discuss your analytics setup or request a website audit.
Written by Stefanie Morris, founder of Morris & Co. Marketing. Last reviewed August 2026.
