You are able to set up Google Analytics for your Sporty website to be able to view site traffic.
- Go to Google Analytics
- Click Sign In (top right), and select Google Analytics. You will need to have a Google Account to set up Google Analytics (Create a Google Account)
- Follow the instructions outlined in this support article to set up your Google Analytics
- In Google Analytics, click Admin from the menu at the top of the page
- Set up your Google Analytics 4 (GA4).
- Copy this code (highlight it and right-click > Copy)
- Log in to your Sporty website, go to Site Settings > under the heading Browser Settings click SEO & Analysis
- Under the area Google Measurement ID, add the GA4 measurement ID G-XXXXXXXX
Paste the code in the Google Tracking code text field and click Save.
For additional help, please see https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/9304153?hl=en
Note, from 1 July 2023 Google replaced Universal Analytics (UA codes) with Google Analytics 4 (GA4) codes. See this Google support article. At that time, you were required to move to a GA4 code to continue to track analytics from your website. See this Google support article for steps on how to do this.
Advanced custom tracking
Google Analytics also lets you perform custom tracking for individual campaigns by creating custom URLs with "utm" parameters. By adding utm parameters to the URLs you use in your website links or ad campaigns, you can see which campaigns are driving which traffic.
When a person clicks your referral link, the URL parameters are sent to Google Analytics, and the parameter values become visible in your Google Analytics traffic reports. Please note that this functionality is part of Google Analytics (not Sporty) so if you require any support or guidance, please refer to support articles from Google Analytics or a digital marketer that has expertise with Google Analytics.
Here are links to introductory support articles from Google Analytics:
IMPORTANT: All Google Analytics campaign reporting and traffic statistics are visible via your Google Analytics account (not via Sporty).
Track registrations as conversions
Google Analytics tells you how many people visited your website. It can also tell you how many of those visitors went on to complete a registration form, and where those people came from. That is the difference between knowing you had 400 visitors last week and knowing that 12 of them registered, and that 9 of those 12 came from your Facebook post.
You do not need any development work from Sporty to set this up. It uses something already built into your Sporty forms.
How it works
Every time someone completes one of your registration forms, they land on a confirmation page. That page has its own unique web address, and every confirmation page address includes the same piece of text:
/processform/complete
Because that text only ever appears on a completed registration, you can tell Google Analytics to treat a visit to that page as a conversion, which Google calls a key event.
This works whether the person pays by card or chooses to pay by invoice. Both finish on the same confirmation page.
Before you start, you will need:
- Google Analytics already set up on your Sporty website, following the steps earlier in this article. If your Google Measurement ID field is empty in Site Settings, do that first, because nothing below will work without it.
- Access to your Google Analytics account with permission to change settings. In Google Analytics this is called Editor or Administrator access.
Allow about 20 minutes, and expect to wait up to 24 hours before numbers start appearing.
Step 1: Create the key event in Google Analytics
1. Go to Google Analytics and click Admin (the gear icon, bottom left)
2. Under Data display, click Events
3. Click Create event, then Create
4. In Custom event name, type a name you will recognise later, for example `registration_complete`
5. Under Matching conditions, set up two conditions with the following Parameters, Operators, and Values:
- event_name equals page_view
- page_location contains /processform/complete
6. Click Create
7. While you're still in Admin, go to Key events
8. Find the event you just created and switch on Mark as key event
Google Analytics will only start recording from the moment you create the event. It does not backdate, so you will not see registrations from before today.
Step 2: Stop your payment provider taking the credit
Do not skip this step if you take online payments through Sporty. It is the difference between numbers you can trust and numbers that look fine but are wrong.
When someone pays by card, they leave your website, go to the payment provider's website to enter their card details, and then come back. Google Analytics does not know that is the same journey. Unless you tell it otherwise, it treats the return as a brand new visit, and credits the registration to the payment provider instead of to the Facebook post, email or Google search that actually brought the person in.
To get it right:
1. First, find out which website addresses your payments go through. In Google Analytics, go to Reports > Acquisition > Traffic acquisition and look down the Session source / medium column for anything that looks like a payment company. It will usually appear as something like `paymentprovider.co.nz / referral`. Note the exact wording.
2. Go to Admin > Data streams and click your website's data stream
3. Click Configure tag settings
4. Click Show all to reveal the full list of settings
5. Click List unwanted referrals
6. Click Add condition, choose Referral domain contains, and enter the payment website address you noted in step 1
7. Add a condition for each payment provider you use, then click Save
If you take payments through more than one method, check for all of them. If you only ever take payment by invoice, you can skip this step.
Step 3: Check it is working
1. Open your registration form and complete a test registration, right through to the confirmation page
2. In Google Analytics, go to Reports > Realtime
3. Scroll to the Event count by Event name card and look for the event name you created
Realtime usually shows activity within a minute or two. Your standard reports take up to 24 hours to catch up, so do not worry if the daily numbers look empty at first.
If nothing appears in Realtime:
- Check the Google Measurement ID field in Site Settings > Browser Settings > SEO & Analysis is filled in and saved
- Check you used contains rather than equals
- Check the spelling of `/processform/complete`, including the leading slash
- Try again in a browser with ad blockers and privacy extensions switched off, as these commonly block Google Analytics
What the number does and does not tell you
Worth understanding before you report these figures to your committee or board.
It counts more than brand new registrations. Anyone who reaches a confirmation page is counted. That includes someone changing an existing registration, and it includes registrations your own administrators enter on someone's behalf. If a parent adds two extra days to a booking in the same week, that is counted alongside their original registration.
Someone revisiting their confirmation page is counted again. If people bookmark the page, or click the link in their confirmation email days later. Each visit counts.
For those two reasons, treat the figure as a reliable guide to trends and traffic sources rather than as an exact count of registrations. If you need the exact number, your form database and SuperCRM remain the source of truth.
Exclude your own team's activity. Your administrators testing forms and processing registrations will otherwise show up in the figures. If your administrators work from a fixed IP address, you can handle this in Google Analytics: go to Admin > Data streams > your stream > Configure tag settings > Define internal traffic, and add your fixed IP address. Then go to Admin > Data filters and switch the Internal Traffic filter to Active..
Your Pages report will contain a lot of confirmation page addresses. Every registration creates its own, so you may see hundreds of one-off page addresses. That is normal and does not mean anything is broken. Report on your key event rather than on the Pages list.
A note on where to get help
IMPORTANT: These instructions relate to you configuring your Google Analytics, not the Sporty platform. These are included for informational purposes only and you should do your own research to ensure you configure Google Analytics correctly. The Sporty support team are unable to provide support or assistance with your configuration of Google Analytics. If you have questions about Google Analytics reports, key events and referral settings, please refer to Google's own support articles or a digital marketer experienced with Google Analytics
Useful Google articles: