Google Analytics

Purchase journey tracking

GA4 tracks the full path from landing on your site to a completed booking, so you can see exactly where visitors convert, or drop off.

Everything you sell reports a category

Netbookings sends an item category to GA4 with every product, so your reporting breaks down by the parts of your business instead of one long undifferentiated list.

Out of the box the category follows your booking types: Stay, Camping, Bathing, Dining, Spa, Private Bathing and retail Orders, plus the second bathing type if you run one. Nothing to configure, it simply starts reporting.

Where those names aren't how you talk about your business, you set your own. A GA4 Item Category list lives in System > Setup > Lists, and the field is available on Pricing Groups, Services, Packages, Retail Products, Memberships and Tickets. Set a value and it replaces the default, so your reports read Campgrounds, Bathhouse Bathing, Sanctuary, Wellness, Activities, Retail or Special Offer: your language rather than ours.

A structure that answers the question you haven't asked yet

The category travels with the item at every step of the journey, not just at the sale. Netbookings raises the full set of ecommerce events, view_item_list, view_item, add_to_cart, remove_from_cart, begin_checkout and purchase, and each one carries the item and the category it belongs to.

That combination is what makes GA4 worth opening. Because browsing, cart activity and revenue all share the same category grid, you can build an Exploration on any of them and get a straight answer, rather than being limited to the reports someone else decided you would need.

We have an Exploration built on exactly this structure and we're happy to share it. Ask us for it and we'll walk you through what it shows.

Going further with Tag Manager

Most businesses have no need to. Put your Google Analytics ID into Netbookings and everything above simply works.

For larger operations, or if you already run Google Tag Manager, Netbookings passes every event and its item data straight into the data layer, so Tag Manager can feed Analytics, Google Ads and anything else you are running from one place. When a Tag Manager container ID is present in your Integrations settings it takes priority and the GA4 field is ignored, which is the right setup once GA4 is configured as a tag inside your container.

Worth being straight about it: Tag Manager takes some working out, and it suits a business with a marketing person, an agency, or a capable AI assistant to sit down with it. Our import file pre-builds the tags, triggers and variables for the Netbookings side of your container. That is a head start rather than the whole job: a full Tag Manager setup usually carries a good deal more that the business builds around it.

Set goals, measure what matters

Another great use of Google Analytics is setting goals and adjusting your website to help achieve them. One of our own Netbookings goals was to offer a free trial to new clients: it started when a client clicked Free Trial, and completed once they filled out the form and hit submit.

With that goal in place we can see how many new clients start the process and what conversion rate we get, invaluable for growing the business. Trial a sale or a special package the same way, and gather vital information for your next marketing push.