GA4 Form Interactions with Enhanced Measurement Events

Matt Crowley - September 30, 2022

Google announced on Thursday September 29^th, 2022 that they have added Form interactions as a new enhanced measurement option. Learn what these are, and some important considerations before you implement them in your GA4 property.

First, What are Enhanced Measurement Events?

Enhanced measurement events are “out of the box” events that you can turn on inside GA4 with the click of a button. They do not require any setup in Google Tag Manager (GTM) and do not require any customization. In theory, they just work! However, that is not always the case… more on that below.

You can find the Enhanced Measurement settings by navigating to your GA4 property, then selecting Admin > Data Streams (under Property Settings) > selecting your data stream.

By clicking the button next to Enhanced Measurement, you are telling Google that you would like to track all Enhanced Measurement events out of the box, which include Page Views, Scrolls, Outbound Clicks, Site Search, Video Engagement, File Downloads and now, Form Interactions.

What are Form Interactions?

Form interactions are user interactions with forms that exist on your website. Specifically, this new enhanced measurement event is configured to track the following, according to Google:

• form_start shows you the first time a user interacts with a form in a session
• form_submit shows you when a user submits a form

Should I use This?

That depends on your circumstance. In most cases, we would recommend a more custom configuration if you have more than one type of form that can be submitted, and those form submissions are a business critical Goal/KPI.

For example, if you want to set up conversions in your GA4 property to import them into a reporting tool for advertising performance measurement, you will need separate individual events for each form. This is not accomplished with the new enhanced measurement event, as it’s just a single event for all forms. Although you can differentiate the forms with event parameters, it is still just a single event.

Ultimately, like many new features in GA4, there are automatic tracking mechanisms that can be used, but currently, require a site that fits the use case perfectly. In most cases, you will still need to take a more custom approach for your unique needs, rather than just using the out of the box solution.

If you are looking for help with implementing GA4 or auditing your existing usage of the platform, please reach out to info@morevisibility.com.