Welton Hong on 
Written By Welton Hong, Ring Ring Marketing
On a chilly Monday morning, the phone at Harrison & Cole Funeral Home stayed eerily quiet. The funeral director, Melissa, couldn’t understand it.
Just two weeks earlier, families were calling steadily about preplanning and immediate services. Now — nothing. Out of curiosity, she looked at her website. The pages loaded slowly, and the contact form seemed broken.
If Melissa had been watching her analytics, she would have seen the red flags: a sharp drop in traffic, fewer phone-click events and visitors abandoning the site within seconds. Instead, she was flying blind.
That’s where Google Analytics 4 (GA4) comes in. GA4 is Google’s free tool for tracking how people use your website. It replaced the old Universal Analytics system in July 2023 — and for funeral homes, it’s more than just a tech upgrade. It’s become an essential compass for understanding families’ behavior online, measuring marketing performance, and ensuring your website quietly does its job 24/7: helping people in their most urgent moments.
Why GA4 Matters in the Funeral Profession
In an industry where most families search online only when they need you right now, knowing what’s happening on your website can make or break your outreach. GA4 shows:
- Who’s visiting and from where — You can see if families are finding you via search engines, social media, or local directories.
- What they’re doing — Track when someone clicks your phone number, fills out a contact form, or downloads a preplanning guide.
- What content works — Learn which pages get the most attention (obituaries, pricing, preplanning info) and where people leave your site.
- Whether marketing is paying off — See which ad campaigns or referral sites are generating inquiries, not just clicks.
- Where problems lurk — Spot sudden traffic drops, slow load times, or broken forms before they cost you calls.
In short, GA4 turns guesswork into evidence. And in a profession where every call could be a family in crisis, that matters.
GA4 vs. the Old Universal Analytics
GA4 isn’t just a facelift—it’s a fundamentally different system:
| Old Universal Analytics | New GA4 |
| Focused on pageviews and sessions | Focused on events (every action counts) |
| Desktop-first mindset | Built for mobile and cross-device tracking |
| Limited machine learning | Built-in AI insights flag trends and anomalies |
| Rigid, fixed reports | Customizable reports and dashboards |
| Less privacy-conscious | Designed for today’s privacy rules (GDPR, CCPA) |
This matters because families don’t browse like they used to. They jump from phones to desktops, from ads to obituaries to contact pages. GA4 follows that path more accurately.
Recent GA4 Updates Funeral Homes Should Know
Since 2024, Google Analytics 4 has quietly added features that can give funeral professionals clearer, faster insights:
- Better attribution with aggregate identifiers — More accurately shows which ads or search campaigns led to calls or inquiries.
- Annotations inside reports — Let you mark when you launch a new service page or ad campaign, so you can see its impact later.
- AI-driven insights — GA4 now flags traffic spikes, drops, or behavior changes automatically, so you don’t miss trends.
- More powerful filters and audience tools — Easily separate obituary traffic from people actively researching services or preplanning.
- Improved privacy/consent tools — Helps you collect personal data transparently, building trust while staying compliant.
- Cross-property report copying — If you run multiple locations, you can reuse the same custom dashboards for all of them.
- Diagnostics and tag troubleshooting — Alerts you faster when tracking breaks, so you’re not misled by missing data.
These upgrades aren’t just bells and whistles. They’re time-savers and risk-reducers —especially for small funeral firms with limited marketing staff.
What It Means for Your Funeral Home
Think of your website as a silent employee who works 24/7. GA4 is how you supervise that employee. These new features make it easier to:
- Spend marketing dollars wisely by seeing what truly drives inquiries.
- Separate “obituary visitors” from “service shoppers,” so you don’t chase the wrong metrics.
- Connect the dots when families start on a phone and finish on a desktop.
- Quickly fix broken forms or phone links before they cost your business.
- Track whether new ideas (like adding online preplanning resources) increase engagement.
In short: GA4 doesn’t just measure traffic — it helps you see if your website is quietly doing the job families need it to do.
How to Get Started
If you don’t have a Google Analytics account set up to monitor trends and glean insights, you need to do it now. Here’s what to do:
- Go to analytics.google.com and create a free account.
- Set up a “property” for your funeral home website to get a Measurement ID (G-XXXXXXXXXX).
- Add the tracking code to your site’s header (or ask your website provider to do it).
- Test it by checking the Realtime tab while visiting your own site.
Optional: use Google Tag Manager to manage Analytics, Ads, and other tracking tags more easily in one place.
Why You Should Care
Chances are, you already have Google Analytics installed, but you may not be drilling down into what the tool is telling you about your business. Be sure to log in to your account on a regular basis to view various reports. See what sticks out – and then think hard about what these insights tell you about how to move forward.
The bottom line is families often come to your site in moments of urgency. If your site is confusing, slow, or invisible, they’ll leave— and call someone else.
By paying attention to Google Analytics 4, you’ll get a clear understanding of how families find your website, so you can steer your funeral home with clarity and confidence, knowing that when your phone rings, it’s because your website quietly did its job.
Welton Hong is the founder and CEO of Ring Ring Marketing, which has helped thousands of funeral homes and cemeteries grow their revenue through online marketing strategies. Visit RingRingMarketing.com and follow the company on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and X.