How to find your conversion rate in Google Analytics (GA4)

If you haven’t heard of conversion rate yet: it’s the percentage of visitors that complete a specific action. That action could be buying your offer from your sales page, or signing up for your opt-in freebie. Knowing your conversion rate tells you whether your page is actually working.

You can track your conversion rate in Google Analytics (GA4). You set up an event to track conversions, and see where visitors came from and which pages get you the most subscribers or sales.

What counts as a conversion in GA4

In GA4, conversions are tracked as “Key Events.” In the older Google Analytics (Universal Analytics), they were called “Goals.” If you had a goal set up to track when someone reached your Thank You page after buying or opting in, that’s what you’ll now track as a Key Event in GA4.

GA4 works by tracking events (any user action), and then marking specific events as Key Events for reporting. So if you want to track sales, you’d create an event that fires when someone reaches your Thank You page, or when they complete a purchase through your checkout.

How to set up a Key Event for a conversion

In Google Analytics directly (no code)

1. Open GA4 and go to Admin > Events (under Data Collection and Modification).
2. Click Create event.
3. For an opt-in or Thank You page conversion, select Create event from existing events. Choose the event that fires on your Thank You page. If you don’t see it listed, your events may not be set up yet (see step 4).
4. Give your new event a clear name like “purchase” or “email_signup.”
5. Apply any conditions if needed (for example, only count it as a conversion if a specific page URL matches).
6. Save your event.
7. Go to Admin > Conversions and mark your new event as a Key Event by toggling it on.

If you use Google Tag Manager (GTM)

If you’re using GTM (which many course creators do for cleaner tracking), you’ll set up a conversion tag in GTM that fires on your Thank You page or checkout completion page:

1. In GTM, create a trigger that fires when the page URL contains your Thank You page.
2. Create a tag that sends a conversion event to GA4.
3. Name the event clearly (e.g., “purchase”).
4. Publish your GTM changes.
5. In GA4, go to Admin > Conversions and mark your new event as a Key Event.

The key thing: make sure you’re redirecting new subscribers or buyers to a dedicated Thank You page so you have a clear signal to track.

How to find your overall conversion rate in GA4

1. In GA4, go to Reports > Engagement > Events.
2. Look for your Key Event in the list (your “purchase” or “email_signup” event).
3. Check the Conversion rate column. This shows the percentage of all sessions that included that event.

This is your overall conversion rate. If you saw 1,000 sessions and 25 of them resulted in a conversion, your conversion rate is 2.5%.

You can customize this view by changing the date range to zoom in on specific periods (launch week, for example) or by adding dimensions to see conversion rate by traffic source, landing page, or other attributes.

How to find your conversion rate by page or landing page

To see which pages are driving conversions, you’ll use GA4’s Explore feature or a custom report:

1. Go to Reports > Engagement > Events.
2. Click into your Key Event to drill down.
3. Add a dimension like Landing page or Page path and screen class to see which pages led to the most conversions.

Alternatively, create a more detailed view:

1. Go to Explore (under Reports).
2. Create a new blank exploration.
3. Drag your Key Event metric into the Metrics section.
4. Drag Landing page (or Page path) into the Dimensions section.
5. You’ll see a table showing conversion counts and rates for each page.

This is where you find your high-performing pages and your underperformers. If a specific page is converting at 5% and others are at 0.5%, that’s a signal to study what makes that page work so well.

Troubleshooting: your data looks wrong

My conversion rate seems too high or too low compared to what I expect.

Check that your Key Event is firing correctly. Test it by visiting your Thank You page and looking at Real-time in GA4 within the next minute. You should see your event fire. If not, your GTM tag or GA4 event setup may have an issue.

I see referral traffic from my email provider, ConvertKit, or other platforms.

When people opt in on your page and get redirected to your email provider, they may come back to your site and show as referral traffic from that provider. This can skew your conversion rate. In GA4, go to Admin > Data Streams > Configure tag settings > List excluded referrals, and add domains like app.convertkit.com so they don’t get counted as referring sources.

Compare your rate to a benchmark

Once you know your conversion rate, the next step is figuring out if it’s good. That depends on a lot of factors (your traffic source, your audience, your offer). Check out our guide to sales page conversion rate benchmarks for course creators to see how your rate stacks up.

What your conversion rate tells you about the rest of your funnel

Conversion rate is useful data, but it’s rarely the whole story. A low rate could mean your page isn’t working, or it could mean the wrong people are landing on it, or it could mean your marketing only kicks in during launches and the traffic in between isn’t warm enough to buy. The fix depends on which one it is.

If your course sells during launches but goes quiet the rest of the time, the sales page usually isn’t the problem. The systems underneath, your sales foundation, your social proof, and your ongoing marketing, aren’t set up to keep selling when you’re not actively promoting. A free Steady Sales Roadmap call is the right place to start. We’ll look at your whole funnel together and figure out what needs to happen for your course to sell more consistently, not just during launches.