London, UK · Serving UK/EU · GBP pricing
Knight Frank case study. GA4 migration & analytics transformation
Project overview.
Knight Frank, one of the world's leading independent property consultancies, undertook an ambitious 18-month digital transformation to completely redesign their UK website.
The project aimed to modernise user experience, improve usability, and boost lead generation across residential and commercial property services.
​
Marc Alexander led the analytics strategy and implementation throughout this transformation, delivering a scalable measurement infrastructure across more than 50 international websites whilst ensuring data continuity, GDPR compliance, and measurable business outcomes.
​
Client: Knight Frank (Global property consultancy)
Project Duration: January 2024 - July 2025
Marc's role: Senior Web Analytics Specialist
Scope: 50+ international websites across multiple markets
Key technologies: GA4, Google Tag Manager, TagCommander, Optimizely CMS, LeadPro CRM, ContentSquare
The challenge
Knight Frank's digital transformation created significant analytics and measurement challenges that needed addressing whilst maintaining business continuity.
​
Legacy systems and technical debt
​
The existing website ran on a heavily customised legacy CMS with years of accumulated tracking complexity. DataLayers were inconsistently implemented, naming conventions varied across pages, and manual tagging created maintenance nightmares. The migration to Optimizely required complete tracking re-architecture without losing historical data continuity.
​
Multi-market complexity at scale
​
With 50+ international websites across different markets, languages, and property types, Knight Frank needed consistent measurement standards that scaled globally whilst accommodating regional variations. Any solution needed to work reliably across residential sales, lettings, commercial property, and rural estates.
​
Privacy and compliance requirements
​
Operating across the UK and EU, Knight Frank needed GDPR-compliant tracking from day one. The existing privacy banner was non-compliant, lacking granular consent controls and creating regulatory risk. Any new implementation required balancing legal compliance with analytical capability.
​
Poor lead generation performance
​
Lead generation forms showed abandonment rates exceeding 80%. Long, complicated forms performed poorly on mobile devices, and the business lacked visibility into where prospects dropped off. UX improvements needed data-driven evidence, but existing tracking couldn't provide reliable funnel analysis.
​
Disconnected systems creating attribution gaps
​
GA4 captured website behaviour whilst leads lived in LeadPro CRM. No connection existed between systems, making attribution impossible. Marketing couldn't prove ROI, and sales teams had no context about prospect behaviour before form submission. The business needed unified visibility from first visit through to property instruction.
Technical approach and methodology
Discovery and requirements gathering
​
Marc conducted extensive stakeholder interviews across marketing, product, UX, IT, and leadership teams to understand business priorities, current pain points, technical constraints, and success criteria. This discovery phase ensured solutions addressed real business needs rather than just technical requirements.
​
Phased implementation minimising risk
​
Rather than big-bang deployment risking catastrophic failure, Marc implemented incrementally—pilot market proving concepts before global rollout, parallel running validating new tracking against legacy systems, progressive feature releases allowing validation at each stage, and continuous monitoring catching issues before they became problems.
​
Collaboration across teams
​
Marc worked closely with Optimizely Expert Services on CMS integration, internal development teams on technical implementation, UX designers on form optimisation, marketing teams on measurement requirements, legal and compliance on privacy frameworks, and leadership on strategic reporting needs.
​
This collaboration ensured solutions served all stakeholders whilst maintaining technical excellence.
​
Documentation and knowledge transfer
​
Every implementation included comprehensive documentation covering measurement strategy and KPI definitions, technical specifications for developers, user guides for marketing teams, troubleshooting procedures for common issues, and governance processes maintaining standards long-term.
​
Marc also provided training ensuring teams could maintain and evolve the analytics infrastructure independently after project completion.
Marc's solutions
Marc designed and implemented a comprehensive analytics strategy addressing technical infrastructure, measurement standards, compliance requirements, and business outcomes.
​
CMS-integrated measurement automation
​
Marc created a dynamic settings framework within Optimizely CMS using mandatory dropdown fields for page metadata—page type, category, division, and transaction type. This metadata automatically generated consistent page-load dataLayers across all pages.
​
Rather than manually tagging each page, content editors selected appropriate values during page creation. The CMS then automatically populated dataLayers with correct, standardised information that fed into GA4 through Google Tag Manager.
​
This approach eliminated manual tagging overhead, enforced naming standards across 50+ websites, ensured consistency from day one rather than fixing problems later, scaled effortlessly as new pages and markets were added, and reduced technical debt that accumulated in legacy systems.
​
Universal form tracking architecture
​
Working with Optimizely Expert Services, Marc developed an "all pages, all forms" solution that automatically captured form interactions across the entire website without requiring individual form tagging.
​
The solution automatically populated dataLayer events for form opens, submissions, and closures for any form generated across all websites. This meant new forms worked immediately without developer intervention, consistent tracking across all form types and markets, reliable funnel analysis from page view through form interaction to submission, and elimination of gaps where forms weren't tagged.
​
Identity stitching for attribution
​
Marc integrated Knight Frank's internal forms database with both GA4 and LeadPro CRM using unique conversion IDs. When prospects submitted forms, that unique ID flowed into GA4 via dataLayer and Google Tag Manager, and simultaneously into LeadPro via API integration.
​
This identity stitching enabled complete journey visibility from first website visit through form submission to CRM record. Marketing teams could attribute leads to original acquisition channels, sales representatives saw complete prospect behaviour history in CRM, attribution modelling became reliable rather than guesswork, and the business could calculate true marketing ROI including closed deals, not just form submissions.
​
GA4 measurement strategy and governance
​
Marc defined GA4 measurement strategy across all markets, working with senior stakeholders to align tracking with commercial priorities. He created KPI frameworks for property search journeys—listing discovery, enquiry submission, valuation requests, and instruction to sell.
​
Event taxonomies were standardised globally with regional flexibility where needed. Custom dimensions captured business-critical context—property type, price band, location, division. Conversion definitions matched business processes rather than generic web analytics thinking.
​
Marc established measurement governance including tracking specifications for development teams, QA processes ensuring data quality, documentation accessible to all teams, and regular audits maintaining standards as sites evolved.
​
GDPR-compliant privacy framework
​
Marc designed and implemented a modern privacy banner using TagCommander, providing clear, user-friendly consent options meeting legal requirements without sacrificing analytical capability. The banner supported granular consent categories—analytics, advertising, functional—with appropriate default states for UK/EU versus other regions.
​
Consent Mode v2 integration ensured GA4 and advertising tags respected user choices. The implementation maintained measurement capability for consented users whilst ensuring non-consented users' privacy. Regular privacy audits confirmed ongoing compliance as regulations evolved.
​
Data-driven UX optimisation
​
Using GA4 and ContentSquare, Marc identified specific friction points in lead generation forms. Analysis revealed 80%+ abandonment on high-value enquiry forms, with particular issues on mobile devices where field layouts were problematic and validation errors were unclear.
​
Marc worked with UX designers providing data-driven recommendations simplifying form fields, improving mobile usability, reducing friction through clearer labelling and validation, and optimising field ordering based on completion patterns. Iterative testing validated improvements before full rollout.
​
Executive reporting and dashboards
​
Marc built executive dashboards in Looker Studio and Power BI connecting digital performance to business outcomes. Dashboards showed lead volume by channel and property type, conversion rates through multi-step funnels, cost per acquisition and marketing ROI, performance against targets and historical periods, and drill-down capability from high-level metrics to detailed analysis.
​
These dashboards gave leadership clear visibility into how digital activity drove commercial outcomes, informing budget allocation and strategic decisions with reliable data rather than intuition.
Results and impact
Marc's work delivered measurable technical and commercial improvements across Knight Frank's digital operations.
​
Lead generation performance
​
27.4% overall uplift in form completion rates within the first month post-launch, representing hundreds of additional qualified leads monthly. This improvement came from combination of UX optimisation, better mobile experience, and clearer form design informed by data analysis.
​
49.2% conversion rate on Market Appraisal forms from organic traffic, a critical high-intent form where property owners request valuations. This conversion rate significantly exceeded industry benchmarks for property services.
​
Privacy compliance and data quality
​
67% desktop and 63% mobile consent acceptance rates, above industry benchmarks for privacy banners. High consent rates maintained analytical capability whilst ensuring legal compliance.
​
Implementation achieved full GDPR compliance across all markets, eliminated regulatory risk from non-compliant tracking, maintained data quality through proper consent management, and created framework adapting to evolving privacy regulations.
​
Technical infrastructure
​
Scalable analytics architecture now supporting 50+ international websites with consistent measurement standards, automated dataLayer generation eliminating manual tagging overhead, universal form tracking working reliably across all forms and markets, and identity stitching providing complete attribution from website through CRM.
​
Implementation reduced technical debt accumulated over years, created maintainable system requiring minimal ongoing developer work, established standards scalable to future markets and properties, and built foundation supporting advanced analytics like BigQuery integration.
​
Business visibility and decision-making
​
Marketing teams gained reliable attribution connecting spend to outcomes, sales representatives accessed complete prospect behaviour history in CRM, executives received clear dashboards showing digital performance against targets, and UX teams validated improvements with data rather than assumptions.
Organisation-wide confidence in analytics improved significantly, with teams actually using data for decisions rather than ignoring unreliable numbers.
​
Recognition and awards
​
Marc's delivery excellence and cross-functional collaboration earned recognition as part of Knight Frank's Project Team of the Year 2024, acknowledging exceptional work on this major digital transformation.
Key learnings and insights
Automation scales, manual doesn't
​
The CMS-integrated dataLayer framework proved that investing in automation pays dividends at scale. Rather than manually tagging 50+ websites, automation ensured consistency from day one and eliminated ongoing maintenance burden.
​
Identity stitching transforms attribution
​
Connecting website behaviour to CRM outcomes changed how Knight Frank understood marketing effectiveness. Rather than stopping attribution at form submission, complete visibility through to instruction enabled true ROI calculation.
​
Privacy compliance and analytics aren't opposing goals
​
Thoughtful privacy implementation maintained analytical capability whilst ensuring compliance. High consent rates proved that clear, user-friendly privacy controls work better than hiding tracking or ignoring regulations.
​
Data-driven UX improvements deliver measurable results
​
Using GA4 and ContentSquare to identify friction points, then validating fixes with data, delivered 27% improvement in form completions. Intuition-based UX changes rarely achieve these results.
​
Governance matters more than technology
​
The best technical implementation fails without proper governance. Establishing clear standards, documentation, and processes ensured measurement quality persisted long after initial implementation.
Similar challenges Marc can solve
If your organisation faces challenges similar to Knight Frank's, Marc can help:
​
-
Website migrations requiring analytics continuity and re-architecture
​
-
Multi-property or multi-brand measurement needing consistent standards at scale
​
-
CRM and back-office integration connecting website behaviour to business outcomes
​
-
Privacy and GDPR compliance whilst maintaining analytical capability
​
-
Lead generation optimisation using data to improve conversion rates
​
-
Executive reporting providing clear visibility into digital performance
Client testimonial
“It’s been a real pleasure working with Marc. He’s a talented and highly competent professional whose contributions across product development and analytics have been invaluable. I’ve appreciated his collaborative spirit and sharp insight. I would gladly recommend him to any team.”
​
Megan McGregor – Partner, Digital Product Manager
Working with Marc
Marc works with businesses throughout the UK, EU, and internationally via remote collaboration. Based in Poplar, London, he's available for on-site work across the UK whilst serving international clients remotely.
​
Projects typically begin with discovery to understand business context, measurement requirements, and technical landscape. Marc then designs solutions, implements technical systems, validates quality, and transfers knowledge ensuring teams can maintain analytics independently.
​
Engagement models include project-based work for specific implementations, ongoing retainers for continued optimisation and support, and strategic advisory for organisations building internal analytics capability.
Ready to find out what's actually wrong with your GA4?
Whether you need GA4 implementation, analytics strategy, technical integration, or ongoing support, Marc can help transform your data into reliable business intelligence.
​
Schedule Your Free Consultation →
​​
He's surprisingly friendly, even when telling you your GA4 tracking's a disaster.
​​
See Marc's GA4 expert credentials and case studies →
​
Or explore Marc's specialised services:
​
​
​