Who this is for
Three groups. Businesses that never had analytics configured properly and are about to spend on ads. Businesses whose GA4 was set up by a previous agency and now reports numbers nobody can reconcile. And businesses that migrated from Universal Analytics, kept the old habits, and have not looked at the property since.
If your problem is that tags are scattered across the theme and nobody knows what is installed, start with Google Tag Manager setup and do both together; they are usually the same project.
What a GA4 setup includes
- Property and stream configuration. Data retention set to the maximum available, internal traffic and known bots excluded, cross-domain tracking where you own more than one domain, and reporting identity chosen deliberately.
- A measurement plan. Before anything is tagged, a written list of the actions that matter, what each is called, what data goes with it, and which ones count as a key event. Analytics that skips this step ends up measuring scrolls.
- Event tracking. Form submissions per form, phone taps, WhatsApp clicks, email clicks, file downloads, booking steps, and eCommerce events where you sell online.
- Key events marked so they can be imported into Google Ads and used for bidding.
- Traffic quality. Referral exclusions for payment gateways, UTM conventions written down, and internal and staff traffic filtered out.
- Ad platform links. Google Ads and Search Console linked, so campaign and query data appear where you can use them.
- Consent handling where your audience or your legal advice requires it, using Google’s consent mode rather than a blocked tag. What your markets require is a question for your lawyer; implementing their answer is my part.
- Reports and audiences that answer real questions, plus retargeting audiences shared to the ad platforms.
What a GA4 audit covers
If the property already exists, the audit answers whether you can trust it. I check the tag firing once and only once, whether events are named consistently, whether key events match real enquiries, whether traffic is being misattributed by missing referral exclusions or bad UTMs, whether internal traffic is inflating the numbers, and whether the property’s data is reaching Google Ads. You get a findings list ranked by how badly each item distorts a decision, with the fixes quoted separately if you want them done.
How the work runs
- Access and inventory (day one). GA4, Tag Manager, Google Ads, Search Console and the site itself. I list every tracking script currently on the site, which usually finds two analytics installations and a pixel nobody remembers.
- Measurement plan (days two to three). The actions, their names, their parameters and their business meaning, agreed with you in writing.
- Implementation (days three to six). Tags, triggers and variables built in Tag Manager, published to a preview environment first.
- Verification. Real test submissions from a real device: every form, every call button, every WhatsApp link, checked in DebugView and again in the realtime report.
- Ads and reporting. Key events imported to Google Ads, audiences built, and the reports or dashboard your team will actually open.
- Documentation and handover. A tracking document listing every event, where it fires and what it means, plus a recorded walkthrough.
A standard setup takes one to two weeks. An audit takes a few days.
What you receive
- A configured GA4 property in your own Google account.
- A measurement plan and a tracking document listing every event and its meaning.
- Verified key events, with screenshots of the test firings.
- Google Ads and Search Console links, and audiences shared to your ad accounts.
- Reports or a Looker Studio view, if that is in scope; the fuller version is Looker Studio dashboards and reporting.
- A recorded walkthrough for whoever inherits the property.
Mistakes I find most often
- No key events at all, so Google Ads has nothing to optimize towards and every campaign is bidding blind.
- One generic form event for six different forms, so nobody can tell a quote request from a newsletter signup.
- The tag installed twice, once in the theme and once in Tag Manager, doubling sessions.
- Payment gateways not excluded as referrals, so every purchase is credited to the gateway instead of the channel that earned it.
- Staff and office traffic counted, which on a small Nepali site can be a fifth of the sessions.
- UTMs typed by hand in three different capitalisations, splitting one campaign into four rows. The fix is a shared UTM builder and a written convention.
Where this fits
GA4 is the measurement layer. Google Tag Manager is how it is deployed and maintained, Google Ads conversion tracking and Meta Pixel and Conversions API are the platform-side equivalents, and the whole picture is described on analytics and tracking. Every ads or SEO engagement I run starts here, because a channel you cannot measure is a channel you cannot judge.
Pricing pointer
Setup and audit are both fixed-price projects, scoped by the number of sites, forms and conversion actions. Prices are on request. GA4 itself is free at the volumes almost every business in Nepal operates at.
Next step
Request a free tracking check: send me view access to your GA4 property and I will tell you within 4 business hours whether the numbers you are looking at can be trusted, and what it would take to fix them.