Squarespace Analytics: What to Actually Track and Why

Education

27 Jul

If you're building Squarespace sites for clients, you've probably had this conversation: client asks about analytics, you nod knowingly, then realise you're not entirely sure what they should actually be looking at. Is the Squarespace dashboard enough? Should they be in Google Analytics 4? Both? Neither?

The honest answer: it depends on what they're trying to achieve. But more importantly, most people are tracking the wrong things entirely. Let me walk you through what actually matters.

Squarespace Analytics vs Google Analytics 4: The Reality

Squarespace's built-in analytics dashboard is honestly quite good for a quick overview. It shows you page views, traffic sources, and visitor behaviour without any setup required. That's genuinely useful. But it has real limitations.

The Squarespace dashboard doesn't distinguish between direct traffic and untagged organic traffic properly. It also won't track conversions beyond its native e-commerce features, and it can't tell you which button people are clicking or where they're dropping off in a form. It's a dashboard designed for simplicity, not sophistication.

Google Analytics 4 is more powerful but requires setup. It can track conversion events, custom user interactions, and gives you access to proper cohort analysis and audience insights. It integrates with Google Ads, Search Console, and other Google properties. If your client is serious about understanding their site's performance, GA4 is worth the effort.

The best approach: set up GA4 properly, but keep an eye on the Squarespace dashboard for quick sanity checks. They complement each other.

Setting Up GA4 on Squarespace the Right Way

Squarespace allows you to input your GA4 measurement ID directly in the site settings, which is convenient. Navigate to Settings, then Analytics, and paste in your measurement ID. Done.

But here's where people mess up: they think that's enough. It's not. Squarespace's native GA4 connection doesn't include conversion tracking or custom events. If you want to track when someone submits a contact form, signs up for a newsletter, or completes a purchase beyond the native Squarespace e-commerce system, you need to go deeper.

For proper conversion tracking, you need to inject the full GA4 code snippet and set up event tracking via code injection. Go to Website Tools, then Code Injection, and add this to the Header:

  
    <script async src="https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtag/js?id=G-XXXXXXXXXX"></script>
<script>
  window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || [];
  function gtag(){dataLayer.push(arguments);}
  gtag('js', new Date());
  gtag('config', 'G-XXXXXXXXXX');
</script>
  

Replace the measurement ID with your actual ID. This gives you full GA4 functionality. Now you can add custom events for form submissions, button clicks, or other interactions by injecting code at the footer level for specific pages or site-wide.

Conversion Tracking That Actually Works

Squarespace e-commerce integrates well with GA4 automatically, so if your client is selling through Squarespace, purchase tracking is handled. Good news there.

For contact forms, things get trickier because Squarespace forms don't have built-in GA4 conversion event tracking. You'll need to inject custom JavaScript. On the page containing the form, add this to the Footer Code Injection:

<script>
document.addEventListener('submit', function(e) {
  if (e.target.classList.contains('sqs-form-block')) {
    gtag('event', 'contact_form_submitted', {
      'event_category': 'contact',
      'event_label': 'form_submit'
    });
  }
});
</script>

This listens for form submission and fires a GA4 event. You can then set up a conversion in GA4 using this event name.

For newsletter signups through Squarespace's email capture block, the same principle applies. Test thoroughly though, because form implementations vary depending on your Squarespace plan and setup.

Understanding Traffic Sources Without the Confusion

The Squarespace dashboard groups traffic into a few main buckets: Direct, Organic Search, Paid Ads, Referral, and Social. The problem is these buckets are crude.

Organic Search in the Squarespace dashboard lumps all search traffic together, but it doesn't tell you which keywords are driving traffic. That's what Google Search Console is for. Referral traffic shows you which sites are linking to your client's site, which is useful for understanding if their PR efforts are working.

In GA4, you get much more granular data. You can see traffic by campaign, by specific landing page, by device type, and by user behaviour. This is where the real insights hide.

If your client has a typical service-based business, focus on this in GA4: which landing pages are getting the most qualified traffic, which pages have the lowest bounce rate, and which traffic sources are converting to leads. Ignore pageviews as a primary metric. It's noise.

The Metrics That Actually Matter

Here's what you should be tracking for most Squarespace client sites. This is what I present in monthly reports and what actually drives decisions.

First, sessions and users. A session is a visit, a user is a person. This tells you if you're getting more people coming to the site month over month.

Second, engagement rate. This is a GA4 metric that shows the percentage of sessions that were engaged, meaning the user spent at least 10 seconds on the site or triggered a conversion event. It's a much better indicator of quality than bounce rate.

Third, conversion rate. If your client has defined conversions, this is king. Whether it's a contact form submission, a newsletter signup, or a purchase, conversion rate tells you if the site is doing its job.

Fourth, traffic source performance. Which channels are bringing engaged users and conversions. Organic search, paid ads, referrals. Knowing which channel performs best tells you where to invest next.

Fifth, top landing pages. Which pages are your highest performers. This informs future content strategy and design priorities.

Everything else is supporting detail. Don't drown your client in metrics. Give them these five, show month-over-month trends, and explain what it means for their business.

Google Search Console: The Missing Piece

Most Squarespace sites don't have Search Console set up, and that's a huge oversight. This is where you see which keywords people are actually searching to find the site, how many impressions each keyword gets, and what your average position is in search results.

Set this up in Search Console by connecting your domain. Verify ownership through DNS records or HTML file upload. Once verified, wait a few days for Google to crawl your site and populate data.

In Search Console, you'll find the Performance report. This shows search queries, click-through rates, and average positions. This is gold for understanding what's working organically and where opportunities exist. A client might rank position 15 for a high-value keyword, meaning a bit of SEO effort could move them to the top 10.

GA4 won't show you search keywords because Google now withholds most of them due to privacy policies. Search Console is the only place you get that data.

Using Analytics to Make Design Decisions

Here's where analytics gets interesting. Most people use it to report backwards. "We had 2,000 sessions this month, up from 1,500 last month." Congratulations. That tells your client absolutely nothing about what to do next.

Instead, use analytics to diagnose and improve. If engagement rate is low, check which pages are the problem. Low engagement usually means the page content isn't matching user intent, or the page layout is confusing. This might trigger a design or content refresh.

If a specific traffic source is underperforming, look at where those users are landing. Are they bouncing immediately? Maybe the landing page isn't relevant to what the ad or referral promised. This is actionable.

If a particular page is a conversion machine, analyse what makes it work. Is it the layout? The copy? The form placement? That insight can be applied to other pages.

Analytics should inform your design and content strategy, not just report on numbers after the fact.

Common Analytics Mistakes on Squarespace Sites

Double-tracking is the most common error. Someone adds GA4 via the Squarespace settings, then adds the full GA4 code snippet separately. Now data is being counted twice, and your reports are worthless. If you're using code injection for advanced tracking, don't also use the Squarespace GA4 setting.

Another mistake: not tracking e-commerce properly. If your client sells through Squarespace, make sure GA4 is properly connected and e-commerce events are firing. Test a purchase in staging to confirm.

Third: ignoring UTM parameters. If your client is running ads or email campaigns, they should be tagged with UTM parameters to track campaign performance properly. Without them, you can't tell which campaign generated which conversions.

Fourth: treating all traffic equally. A user who clicked an ad is different from a user who found you organically, who's different from a referral. Segment your analysis by traffic source.

Fifth: not setting up conversions in GA4. If you don't define what a conversion is, GA4 can't track it. Spend an hour setting up conversion events for anything that matters to your client's business.

Start simple. Get the basics right. Then add sophistication as you and your client understand what you're measuring.