Insight · MeasurementTOFU
Seven GA4 mistakes Indian brands keep making
The short answer
GA4 is only as good as its setup, and most Indian brands' GA4 properties have at least one of these problems. Each one quietly distorts the numbers people use to make budget decisions.
The seven mistakes
- Purchases counted twice. The purchase event fires on the thank-you page and again on reload, or through both a tag and an app. Revenue looks higher than it is.
- Payment gateways stealing credit. Customers leave for the payment page and return; without referral exclusions, the gateway gets credited with the sale.
- UTMs lost in redirects. Campaign links pass through redirects or link shorteners that strip parameters, so paid traffic shows as direct.
- Every click marked as a key event. Button clicks, scrolls and video plays counted as conversions, inflating "conversion rates".
- Revenue defined inconsistently. Sometimes including tax and shipping, sometimes not.
- Internal traffic included. Staff and developers browsing the site pollute the data.
- No BigQuery export. Raw event data isn't retained beyond GA4's limits.
How to check your own property
- Place a test order and count the purchase events
- Look for payment gateway domains in referral reports
- Click a tagged campaign link and check how the session is attributed
- Review which events are marked as key events
- Compare GA4 revenue with your store for a week
The fix
Most of these take hours, not weeks. But until they're fixed, every decision based on GA4 carries the error with it. See GA4 setup and audit.
Why it matters beyond reporting
Ad platforms import conversions from GA4 in many setups, and teams use GA4 to judge channels. A duplicated purchase event doesn't just inflate a dashboard — it can cause Google Ads to bid more aggressively on campaigns that aren't actually producing extra sales, and lead teams to shift budget in the wrong direction.
A 15-minute GA4 health check
- Compare last month's GA4 purchases with actual orders
- Check the referral report for payment gateways
- Review key events — are they all meaningful?
- Check that currency and values are present on purchase events
- Look for internal traffic and test transactions
- Confirm data retention is set to the maximum available
What to do next
- Compare GA4 purchases with back-end orders
- Check for duplicate tags
- Verify payment-gateway return tracking
- Enable consent mode
Frequently asked questions
Why does GA4 show more conversions than our orders?
Usually duplicate events, purchase events firing on thank-you page reloads or test orders. Fixing tags and using transaction IDs prevents double counting.
Why does GA4 show fewer conversions than Meta?
Different attribution models and windows, consent and blockers, and Meta's view-through conversions. Some difference is normal.
How often should GA4 be audited?
After any site, checkout or tracking change, and at least quarterly.
Why don't GA4 and Shopify numbers match?
Common reasons include missing payment-gateway returns, consent, ad blockers and duplicate tags.
Is GA4 accurate enough to use?
For trends and comparisons, yes — but use back-end data as the source of truth.
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