GA4 conversions not tracking? Fixes for GTM + common setups

If GA4 conversions aren’t tracking, it’s rarely “GA4 is broken”. It’s usually one of these: events never fire, events fire but don’t reach GA4, events reach GA4 but aren’t marked as conversions, or consent blocks them.

Here’s a practical checklist to fix it without guessing.

Step 1: Confirm the event exists in GA4

Go to GA4 → Reports → Engagement → Events. Trigger the conversion action on your site (submit the form / complete a purchase) and look for the event name.

Step 2: Debug in GTM Preview mode

If you use Google Tag Manager, use Preview:

• Does the trigger fire?
• Does the GA4 Event tag fire?
• Is it firing on the correct page/state (SPA sites are common traps)?

Common GTM mistakes

• Trigger is bound to a click, but the button is replaced/disabled
• Form submits via AJAX so the “Form Submission” trigger never fires
• Trigger fires too early (before validation passes)
• Wrong container environment (dev vs live)

Step 3: Check for duplicate GA4 tags

A very common issue is installing GA4 via a plugin and via GTM, causing:

• duplicate pageviews
• event duplication
• messy attribution

Step 4: Consent mode / cookie banner blocking

If your cookie banner loads GA only on acceptance (like your setup), then:

• Conversions won’t track until the user accepts
• Lighthouse “works” tests can be misleading (it’s not a real user session)

Decide what you want:

• Strict: no analytics unless accepted (privacy-first)
• Consent mode: cookieless pings + conversions in a compliant way (more advanced)

Step 5: Ecommerce purchases (WooCommerce) specifics

For purchases, the gold standard is firing a GA4 purchase event on the order confirmation page with correct transaction details.

Common purchase tracking issues

• Thank-you page is cached (bad)
• Event fires on page load for everyone (duplicate purchases)
• Transaction ID missing or not unique
• Currency/value not passed correctly

Step 6: Mark the right event as a conversion

GA4 → Admin → Events → toggle “Mark as conversion” for the correct event name. If you renamed it, make sure your naming is consistent.

Quick checklist

Want me to sanity-check your tracking? Send me the site + what should count as a conversion ↗.