Digital Marketing for Contractors
A podcast for home improvement contractors to help you crush your lead goals and take your business to the next level. Join us each episode as we give you powerful insights and practical tips on the best digital marketing strategies to help you grow your home improvement business.
Digital Marketing for Contractors
Rewind Series - Revisiting Google Analytics 4: What's Changed Since 2023
In the first episode of our new Rewind Series, Janet and Caitlyn revisit Google Analytics 4 (GA4) and break down what’s actually changed since its rollout in 2023—and what home improvement contractors need to pay attention to now.
When GA4 first launched, it left many contractors frustrated, confused, and unsure how to find the data they relied on in Universal Analytics. Fast forward to today, and while GA4 still isn’t perfect, it has evolved. In this episode, we cut through the noise to explain what matters, what’s improved, and how contractors should realistically be using GA4 to make better marketing decisions.
You’ll hear a candid discussion about:
- What GA4 was supposed to do vs. how it’s actually being used
- Key reporting and usability improvements since 2023
- Why GA4 should be viewed as a directional tool, not a source of absolute truth
- How to pair GA4 with CRMs, call tracking, and ad platforms for clearer insights
- The biggest mistakes contractors still make when reviewing GA4 data
If GA4 felt overwhelming or useless when you first logged in, this episode will help you reset expectations and use it more strategically—without getting lost in the weeds.
Want to find out how we can create a custom digital marketing game plan for your contractor business? Schedule a call with us at fatcatstrategies.com.
Welcome to Digital Marketing for Contractors, a podcast for home improvement contractors to help you crush your lead goals and take your business to the next level. Join us each episode as we give you powerful insights and practical tips on the best digital marketing strategies to help you grow your home improvement business. Let's get started.
Caitlyn Noble:Welcome back to Digital Marketing for Contractors Podcast. We are starting a new series. It's called the Rewind Series. We're going to revisit our most downloaded episodes of all time and give you the 2025 update. What's still true, what's changed, and what you need to know now. I am Caitlyn and I am so honored to be sitting here next to my business partner, Janet.
Janet Mobley:Hello, I'm Janet. And today we're rewinding to the magical month and year of July 2023. It feels like a lifetime ago. It does feel like an absolute lifetime ago. In that magical month and that magical year, July of 2023, the year of our Lord, we published an episode on the Google Analytics new version.
Caitlyn Noble:It was coming out two years ago.
Janet Mobley:It was coming out two years ago. It's called Google Analytics 4. And that was when Google shut down Universal Analytics, which is the analytics tool that we'd all used for like 20 years. And let me tell you, the marketing world was acting like the sky was actually falling.
Caitlyn Noble:Every contractor was getting one of those scary emails. Urgent, switch now or lose all of your data, which was only half true.
Janet Mobley:So today we're going to break down what still matters when it comes to GA4, what's changed since then, and the actions that you should take in 2025 and 2026 to make GA4 useful and not overwhelming.
Caitlyn Noble:Okay. So we're going to rewind, but we're not going to make you re-listen to that episode, even though it's our top episode ever. So maybe you've already listened to it.
Janet Mobley:Maybe you're one of the people who listened to it.
Caitlyn Noble:So in 2023, we kicked it off by saying, I've been getting emails that make it sound like the world is falling apart because Google is switching to Google Analytics 4. And then immediately, is it as big of a deal as everybody is making it out to be? I'm going to say no.
Janet Mobley:Yeah. And so that's what we were saying then that Google and really so many like scare tactic emails were get our clients were getting hit with these. Yes. Oh my God, do it now, or everything's going to be horrible. And then they'd turn around and ask us, is everything going to be horrible? And what am I supposed to be doing now? What's going to happen with my data? So some of that is still true today. You're not going to lose your business. You're not going to lose business because of a Google Analytics update. You're just not. Analytics are analytics. It's reporting. Yeah. You're not going to tank your leads, and you absolutely don't need to hit panic or hire someone out of fear just to get more charts and more reports. Because that's what it is. It's charts and reports. It's not leads. Honestly, just not still great. Everybody put the gun down. It's fine. It's going to be fine.
Caitlyn Noble:So in that OG episode, we laid out the basics. Uh we talked about analytics is just a tracking tool.
Janet Mobley:Charts and high charts, bubble charts, line charts.
Caitlyn Noble:Maps of the United States. Oh, yeah.
Janet Mobley:I actually did really like the map thing.
Caitlyn Noble:It measures visitors, pages, sources, and events. Um, it helps you understand what's working online, and if you had universal analytics, it simply stopped collecting data. That is so true though.
Janet Mobley:Like, yeah, it in 2023, it was like, nope, no new data can go into this.
Caitlyn Noble:It so forget trying to track anything before 2023 that happened on your website. What else do we explain?
Janet Mobley:Yeah, so in 2023, when we did this episode, we were explaining, you know, things that that should resonate with you. Like what does analytics track? It tracks page visits, important, um, form submissions. Very important. That's the one you should care about. People filling out a form saying, give me a quote. Click to call. Um, also important, but sometimes it's people trying to sell you something, uh, click to text, and which of your service pages were getting the most traction. It also showed you where uh traffic was coming from. That means like, are people visiting your website from paid ads, from your social media campaigns, from organic search? Are they coming direct? So that was kind of a recap of what we talked about in 2023 when it came to Google Analytics for and universal analytics. What else do we talk about in the OG episode?
Caitlyn Noble:So um we debunked the fear-mongering. Uh, we told everybody you don't need to panic. You do not need a massive rebuild, and you do need to make sure that GA4 is installed. Please, if you're listening to this and y'all don't have Google Analytics installed on your website, just send me a personal email and I'll help you out.
Janet Mobley:Okay, so that's what we talked about then. So what is still true? Yeah, it's the same. It's been two and a half years. Two and a half years. Here's what has not changed. You, a home improvement contractor, you do not need to become an analytics expert. You just need GA4 for the information that helps you make marketing decisions. And fun fact, you can even delegate those marketing decisions. So you really just need this tool installed on your website that's gonna spit out reports that help you decide stuff.
Caitlyn Noble:Still true. You will be totally fine if you aren't checking analytics every week. Many level one and level two contractors can run without obsessing over data. If you have an agency, they're doing it for you.
Janet Mobley:Yeah. Also, still true, analytics can help you diagnose problems. Absolutely. So let's say the traffic on your website drops. Yes, or weight increases, or increases, or your leads slow down, or a specific page stops converting. Analytics is the tool that you're gonna get out of your toolbox to help you understand why.
Caitlyn Noble:Still true. You should never be overly dependent on one source of traffic. In the original episode, we talked about a contractor who got 90% of their traffic from PPC. Huge red flag. Still a red flag today.
Janet Mobley:So, what else is still true? That was true then when we recorded the original episode. Looking at your traffic mix, just like Caitlin said, and that mix is like, is it coming from your social? Is it coming from paid ads? Is it coming from organic search? That is one of the fastest ways to evaluate the health of your digital ecosystem.
Caitlyn Noble:And last but not least, still true. If you had universal analytics before 2023 and never upgraded, that data is long gone. And that's okay, just start fresh. So let's get into it. What's different?
Janet Mobley:Yeah, so that's a recap of what we talked about two and a half years ago and what's still true. So, what's different is that GA4 now 26, 30 months later, is I had to do some math in my head. Did you see how you see smoke coming out when I was trying to do that two and a half years math? I think it's 30 months. Anyway, so what's what here we are 30 months later. GA4 is now much better at cross-device tracking. So they're not perfect. So back in the original episode, we talked about how people that's users, and you probably care about homeowners, how they switch between their phone, their iPad, their desktop. And GA4 now does a much better job of connecting that one human as that human puts down one device and picks up another.
Caitlyn Noble:And in 2025, that's even more true. People jump devices constantly. I know I do, I know OG here.
Janet Mobley:I absolutely do.
Caitlyn Noble:More than I do, yes. Um, and GA4 can merge a lot of that behavior.
Janet Mobley:Yeah, but privacy settings, Apple tracking restrictions, cookie loss, all of that disrupts tracking.
Caitlyn Noble:So GA4 perfect, no. Is it the best we've got? It it it really is. Um so here's an action step for you if you're listening. Um, check your mobile versus desktop performance each quarter. We actually look at it monthly, just so you know. Um, but quarter is very important. If mobile conversion is low, your mobile website experience needs work. So there's an action step.
Janet Mobley:That is a really good tip. Yeah. Um, you're saying, just let me linger on this tip for a second. You're saying don't just look at where are you getting traffic, mobile versus desktop. Take it a step deeper and say where are you getting conversions? And let's say, I mean, it's just gonna make it really easy. Let's say half of your traffic people are looking on a mobile device and half of it they're looking on a desktop, but 80% of all of your conversions are coming from a desktop. Yep. That's a red flag. Yes. You should be getting more mobile conversions, and so that's a clue telling you something about your website on a mobile, on a phone looks janky. Yes. Ding a ling ding. Or people can't click on things, or the button is obscured by a new pop-up added. Yeah, correct. Millions of chat bots that you people always want to put on your sites are making your mobile site just don't put it on janky.
Caitlyn Noble:Okay, difference number two. Did you see that? Yep. She's trying to scroll up with her.
Janet Mobley:I'm trying to scroll a touch screen that's not a touch screen. Yeah. Back to the case. I am aging in place on this episode. That's why she jumps devices.
Caitlyn Noble:A second difference, the uh data modeling has improved significantly.
Janet Mobley:So GA4 is going to fill in the missing data with machine learning. And universal analytics, that's the old analytics before they forced us to change. It would never be able to do that.
Caitlyn Noble:What does that mean? So, even if someone blocks cookies or tracking, which a lot of y'all do, um, GA4 can estimate behavior patterns more accurately than before.
Janet Mobley:So, this is especially h helpful for us in the home improvement industry because we see a ton of traffic from iPhones. And iPhones is um is noteworthy to pull out because Apple has made such a huge push in recent years on privacy. So those iPhones are gonna have those privacy um settings baked into them. They're gonna have ad block devices, the Safari browser is very different. So, with all of that, with so much traffic um from homeowners coming through iPhones, it can make it difficult in the digital marketing world to get the data on the reports that you really want to see. Like, where are my conversions coming from? Where am where's my traffic coming from? Where are people dropping off? Yes. Well, if they're all on iPhones, it it's really hard to see because Apple has made it so challenging to share that data with Google Analytics.
Caitlyn Noble:Action step, um again, uh level you know, one and two, you know, this is something you can definitely reach out and have a marketing, you know, agency or your marketing team do this for you. Um, but you need to review modeled conversions. That's just you can search for it in there, modeled conversions in GA4 once a month, especially if you're on PPC. This is gonna help you understand the real picture.
Janet Mobley:So that action step of reviewing modeled conversions. I want to make sure I'm following the conversation. Yes, these are um this is GA4 using probably AI to guesstimate where where they can't see. So they can't see into the black box that is Apple phones, but they've still got reports to help us figure out, and that's what they're calling modeled conversions. Yes. Okay, cool. That's a cool tip.
Caitlyn Noble:I know good these are these are good tips. Uh the third difference, the interface is ten times more confusing.
Janet Mobley:Yeah, I hate GA4 compared to the old um universal analytics.
Caitlyn Noble:I'm gonna be completely honest. Like, I I it makes me grumpy to log into it. And we have staff here at Fat Cat who just log into it easy breezy, lemon squeezy. I use we we have a um uh dashboard that is synced up with GA4, and I use that dashboard because it's easier to use.
Janet Mobley:Anyways, like all of the, I mean, if we can just go on a rant for a second, all of the things that were really cool that you would want to look at from your analytics, they were in like a sidebar that was easy to navigate and you could expand it, and you could look at like mobile conversions. You and now you log into GA4, and to me it just looks like a big old white screen with nothing to click on. Nothing. So you have to like know the magic place to click to have it expand, and then well, guess what?
Caitlyn Noble:Guess what? What it might be ten times more confusing, but it's ten times more flexible. Whatever.
Janet Mobley:It's why we have staff. Uh yeah. So if you're a contractor and you're listening and you and you say things like back in the day, like I say a lot, yes, and you're like, back in the day, I could log into my analytics and I could see stuff, and now I log into it and I don't see anything. That's you're not alone.
Caitlyn Noble:You're not alone. It does give you incredible flexibility, but it is not built for beginners, to Janet's point.
Janet Mobley:Yeah, and I'm now I've come full circle where now I'm a beginner.
Caitlyn Noble:So this is actually um I like this action step. This is a good step.
Janet Mobley:Hit the listeners with the action step.
Caitlyn Noble:So you can create, because of the flexibility of GA4, your own dashboard with, and this is what y'all should be looking at all the time total users, total sessions, and this is obviously your website, your top pages, contact form submissions, which is known as events, click-to-call events, and traffic sources. Obviously, we can build this for you. GA4 makes it pretty easy for you to do it yourself as well.
Janet Mobley:I love this action step, but I'm gonna be a little bit uh sassy and salty. Oh no. So Google gave us universal analytics that showed us all of those things that you just rattled off, then they took it away from us, they shoved GA4 down our throats, forced, forced it on us, took away the data from the old platform. And now to get the like, what are those top six data points that used to be right there front and center on the old universal analytics. You gotta make it yourself. Now you gotta go make your own damn dashboard.
Caitlyn Noble:Which is what I just told y'all I've done with our own tool that we use. Hate.
Janet Mobley:That just makes me so irritated.
Caitlyn Noble:So irritated. But hey, at least it's more flexible.
Janet Mobley:We love hating on Google.
Caitlyn Noble:Difference number four attribution models. Attribution models. This is so important.
Janet Mobley:Especially this is what's new and different since we recorded in 2023.
Caitlyn Noble:Yes, yes, yes, yes. Attribution models have become more accurate for contractors. In 2023, attribution was messy. Nobody knew. Was it PPC, organic, brand awareness, radio, yard sign?
Janet Mobley:So for the for the um Janet. Adult, the adult and old who are listening, what do you mean by attribution? What does that word mean to you in this context?
Caitlyn Noble:Me, Caitlin.
Janet Mobley:You as a digital marketer.
Caitlyn Noble:Oh my god. It's how you know where you're driving traffic to your website. It's how you know this. I mean, like it's how you know where people are coming from to find your business. Right. Okay and leads. And well, obviously leads, yes.
Janet Mobley:But it's not just leads.
Caitlyn Noble:Yeah, but like it's like I know because of this PPC ad, yeah, I generated 20 leads, which generated X amount of dollars.
Janet Mobley:Yes. Yeah. This is what our clients always want to know. So important. Where did I spend my money where I made money back? Correct. And that's what attribution is.
Caitlyn Noble:And we, y'all, we've got episodes on attribution throughout this podcast.
Janet Mobley:So in 2023, when they shoved this new tool that nobody asked for down our throats, attribution was a hot mess. That and now in 2025, a hot 30 months later, GA4 is giving us, quote, data-driven attribution that actually gives you clear insights into which channels deserve credit.
Caitlyn Noble:So to Janet's point, it's actually answering questions, big questions.
Janet Mobley:Where did that lead come from? Where did that traffic come from?
Caitlyn Noble:Is my SEO actually doing anything? Is my PPC spend too high? Are my offline campaigns working? Love it. Action step. You need to review your conversion paths once a quarter. Again, it does make it easy to just search. Search conversion paths. You'll see the order. Wow, you'll see the order channels appear in, channels appear in before someone fills out a form. This is incredibly useful. So yes, Janet was saying it's about a lead, but you can also see, like to Janet's point, or even to my point, that okay, somebody came into my web off my website directly because they saw a yard sign and then they left and then they came back through an ad and then they filled out a form. Conversion paths, super important.
Janet Mobley:How is it tracking yard signs? Do we have to use special URLs? Yeah.
Caitlyn Noble:Oh my God. I think we've got another episode on that. But that directly, so directly somebody could scan in a QR code off a yard sign or directly type in your website URL. And so you're assuming it's a yard sign or a truck, or anyways.
Janet Mobley:Okay, difference number five, Janet. In universal analytics, again, that's the tool that we all loved and they took away from us. Universal analytics events were a pain. So what is an event? Dumb name. An event was the name that Google gave us for let's say you had a big old red button on your homepage that said like Valentine's Day sale. Yeah. We could configure what's called an event to tell you how many times somebody clicked on that button. Yeah. And then we could do tests. So back in the day when we had Universal Analytics and you wanted to configure events and track them, you had to configure every single event separately and manually.
Caitlyn Noble:And they were it was hard to be accurate. Um on a positive note, GA4 tracks many events automatically scrolls, video plays, outbound links, etc.
Janet Mobley:Okay. So that sounds good. Finally, something good about GA4. One positive one small thing. Events are easier to track. And so for home improvement websites, the biggest wins for that event tracking are still easily being able to track click to call, click to text, form submission, get an estimate button clicks, project gallery interactions, and navigation between service pages. Let's say you've got a kitchen page and a bath page, you can see where people navigate. Between those two things. That's called an event. And so all of that is easier to gain insights from with Google Analytics 4 or GA4. Definitely.
Caitlyn Noble:Action step, you guys, make sure your primary conversions are configured. We'll have this all listed out, but generate underscore lead, form underscore, submit, call underscore click, and request underscore quote are just a few examples that these drive real decisions when you have these configured.
Janet Mobley:Not the sexiest names in the world. Wow. But it does. And we didn't name them, but yeah. If you're going into GA4 and you're looking at primary conversions, those four, to your point, those are the real, that's where the money is. It is. That's where people are making a decision to interact with your business. 100%. And you want to be able to track that data.
Caitlyn Noble:Okay, Lord. So if you're listening to this and thinking, just tell me the steps. Okay, what should you be doing right now? Okay, top five GA4 to-dos for contractors in 2025. Jen, I'm gonna let you swap it back and forth with me. Okay, number one.
Janet Mobley:Number one, make sure GA4 is installed correctly. Many contractors that we encounter when we first start working with them, they think their analytics is installed correctly and it's not. So, number one, make sure it's set up right.
Caitlyn Noble:We can definitely audit your site for free to let you know if it's not installed correctly. Um, number two, track only the events that matter. Don't overload those accounts with noise. It's so easy to get into the noise. Focus on, as you guys know, as you do already, calls, forms, clicks to those uh contact us pages, and then, of course, high value service page engagement. Are people spending time on your bathroom remodeling page? Are they spending time on your James Hardy signing page? What's happening there?
Janet Mobley:Okay, number three, check your traffic mix monthly. We hit on this earlier. You want to make sure you've got a healthy mix and avoid the trap of relying on PPC, which are those paid ads, alone. I think we mentioned earlier in this episode, uh in the early in the original 2023 episode that we did, we had somebody that we saw they were getting 90% of their traffic from ads, especially in this day where like AI is changing how people search and there's new AI-driven browsers. If you're relying so heavily on paid ads, you could get caught um caught in a bad situation. So number three, check that traffic mix and make sure it's a healthy mix of different sources.
Caitlyn Noble:Number four, um, I mean, it's just simply not possible. You you can compare year over year data based on what's in GA4. We do not have the data from Universal Analytics, it's gone. You can't.
Janet Mobley:Yeah, so if you if you're like, hey, we did fantastic in 2021.
Caitlyn Noble:Yeah, 2022.
Janet Mobley:2021, 2022. I'd really like to compare June of 2025 to June of 2022. You can want it just like people in hell want ice water, but you ain't gonna get it. You're not gonna be able to compare. You can compare stuff from QuickBooks, you can compare stuff from your CRM, you can compare memories, maybe you kept a journal in like a pink notebook. You could compare all of that, but you ain't gonna get a comparison of 2025 to 2021 from Google Analytics. No, because they took it away from you. So just stop trying to do it.
unknown:Yeah.
Caitlyn Noble:Um, unless you're on a spreadsheet, maybe with exported outdates. Maybe you exported a spreadsheet.
Janet Mobley:I could guess. I could imagine people who went through the past 24 months that we've all lived through, which you know, a lot of liquor was consumed, decisions were questioned. That's true. You know, we all like that's true, looked at ourselves in the mirror. Only forward from here, y'all. And and we're like, what just happened? What just happened in home improvement? We were riding high, and then we weren't riding high. So, like, I could see in 2025 going like, hey, you remember when things were good in 2022? Yeah. What was different? What was different? You can't see it. Not in Google Analytics, you can't. You can see it in um your vacation pictures when you were happy. Your liquor bill that was lower.
Caitlyn Noble:She went there. This is the last step for now, and I promise you it's one of my favorites. You've got to use GA4 to find quote unquote leaks in your site. If people visit your roofty roofing page a thousand times, but only three forms come in. Y'all, something is not working on that page. Yeah.
Janet Mobley:You've got a you, my friend, have a conversion problem. And there's a cream for that. Um and GA4 will show you where to put that cream.
Caitlyn Noble:Yeah, that's fantastic. That's fantastic. Um that's you just processed what I said.
Janet Mobley:I can see it on your face. You're like, ew.
Caitlyn Noble:Oh. So um let's only record podcasts late in the afternoon. That's my my goal. Um, and if you're still with us and you want to make sure your GA4 is set up correctly or fix it without hiring a developer or an agency, even though we're a great resource, you can download our free GA4 resource at Fatcatstrategies.com backslash GA4.
Janet Mobley:It walks you through the exact steps of how to set it up for a home improvement website. There's no panic, no tech speak. It's just a really easy to use guide that shows you exactly what you need. So go to our website, fatcatstrategies.com slash GA4, and you're gonna get that free guide. So thanks for joining us for another episode. The first. It's another episode of the podcast, but it's the first in our rewind series where we're revisiting popular episodes from the Wayback Machine. We love going back through these foundational topics. Yeah, and showing you what's changed. I hope this was at at best, I hope it was at least a little bit entertaining. If you had a long and boring drive and you were listening to us, I hope you got a chuckle and learned something.
Caitlyn Noble:Man, I don't want to personally rewind the last 24 months. No, no. Not for a million dollars. No, no, no, no. Um, but as always, make sure you're subscribed. Our next rewind is coming up next week, and it's another fan favorite shocker. Shocker. Okay.
Janet Mobley:Thanks for joining us and see you next time. Thanks, y'all.
Speaker:Digital marketing for contractors is created by Fat Cat Strategies. For more information, visit fatstrategies.com.