How is CRO consultancy different from a GA4 audit?

A GA4 audit focuses on whether the tracking is correct. CRO analysis uses that tracking, once reliable, to answer where conversions are being lost and why. The two often run together because broken tracking frequently needs fixing before CRO analysis is meaningful.

London, UK · Serving UK/EU · GBP pricing

CRO consultant. Find what is killing your conversions. Fix it with solid evidence.

Behavioural analytics and GA4 combined so you know what to fix and why it worked.

Most conversion rate optimisation work starts in the wrong place. Heatmaps get looked at, someone notices a button colour, a test gets run, and nothing meaningfully changes.

The underlying problem, usually in the data, the tracking, or the user journey, stays invisible because nobody has looked at the full picture.

Marc Alexander is an independent CRO consultant based in London who approaches conversion problems through the analytics layer first.

Using GA4 for quantitative measurement and behavioural tools including ContentSquare, Hotjar, and Microsoft Clarity to understand why users behave the way they do, Marc identifies where conversions are being lost, evidences the cause, and gives development and design teams something concrete to act on.

The outcome is not a list of best-practice recommendations. It is a prioritised diagnosis, backed by data, with measurable before-and-after visibility built in from the start.

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What analytics-driven CRO actually means.

CRO has two distinct problems that need solving in sequence.

The first is finding the right problem. Most businesses optimise the wrong things: homepage CTAs, button colours, hero copy, because those are visible and easy to test. The actual conversion killers are usually subtler. A form that breaks on mobile.

A checkout that loses attribution and makes paid media look unprofitable. A page that ranks well and gets traffic but has a UX issue that silently kills engagement. These do not show up in a heatmap of the homepage.

The second is measuring whether the fix worked. This requires the analytics to be reliable before the test runs. If GA4 is tracking conversions incorrectly, through duplicate events, broken e-commerce, or attribution collapsing at checkout, you cannot trust the results of any test run on top of it. You will optimise toward a number that does not reflect reality.

Marc solves both. He finds conversion problems by combining GA4's quantitative data with behavioural analytics tools that show what users actually do. And because his primary discipline is analytics implementation, the measurement infrastructure underneath any CRO work is trustworthy by the time a test runs.

The tools Marc uses.

GA4. The quantitative foundation. Where users drop off, which segments convert, which channels drive quality traffic versus volume, how revenue maps to the funnel. GA4 answers what is happening and where.

ContentSquare. Session replay, heatmaps, zone-based analytics, and journey analysis at scale. Particularly useful for understanding behaviour across large, complex sites where manual session review is not practical. Marc holds ContentSquare Certified Expert qualification.

Hotjar. Heatmaps, session recordings, and on-page behaviour for mid-sized sites. Marc used Hotjar at VisitBritain to identify and evidence a mobile UX problem that was suppressing engagement on a high-priority campaign page.

Microsoft Clarity. Free behavioural analytics with session recording and heatmap capability. Useful for businesses that need behavioural data without the cost of enterprise tools, and integrates directly with GA4.

The combination of GA4 and at least one behavioural tool is what makes diagnosis reliable. GA4 tells you a page has a high exit rate. The behavioural tool tells you why.

Proof: what this looks like in practice.

Knight Frank — 27% increase in qualified leads from fixing forms nobody knew was broken

Knight Frank had GA4 tracking across 50+ international websites. ContentSquare and GA4 data combined revealed that high-value enquiry forms, one of the most commercially important conversion points on the site, had an 80% abandonment rate.

The problem was not obvious. The form worked. It submitted. It tracked. But behavioural analysis showed exactly where users were dropping off and why: friction in the form flow that had not been identified because it was not visible in standard analytics.

Marc identified the issue, evidenced it with data, and collaborated with the UX team on the fix. The result was a 27% increase in qualified leads.

The fix cost nothing in media spend. The problem had existed, undetected, until the analytics found it.

Read the Knight Frank case study

VisitBritain — 50% improvement in engagement from fixing a mobile UX problem

VisitBritain's Newcastle promotional page was underperforming on mobile. Traffic was there. Engagement was not. Standard analytics showed the drop-off but not the cause.

Hotjar behavioural analysis identified a specific UX issue that was creating friction for mobile users, a problem that was not visible on desktop and had not been caught during development.

Marc ran an A/B test with a corrected variant. The variant showed dramatically better performance. Following implementation, average time on site and external clicks, the two engagement metrics that mattered for the campaign, improved by over 50%.

What Marc's CRO work involves.

Conversion audit:

A structured review combining GA4 funnel analysis with behavioural tool data. Marc identifies where conversions are being lost, segments the problem by device, channel, and user type, and produces a prioritised list of what to fix, ranked by likely commercial impact rather than ease of implementation.

Funnel analysis:

Step-by-step breakdown of the conversion journey using GA4 Explorations and behavioural session data. Identifies exactly where users abandon, whether the problem is consistent or affects specific segments, and what the data suggests about why.

Form and checkout analysis:

Forms and checkout flows are where most conversion value is lost. Marc analyses completion rates, field-level abandonment, error patterns, and cross-domain behaviour, combining GA4 event data with session recordings to identify friction that standard analytics misses.

Mobile vs desktop diagnostic:

Mobile conversion rates are almost always lower than desktop. The question is whether that gap is structurally inevitable or evidence of a fixable UX problem. Marc analyses the behavioural difference between device types to identify mobile-specific friction points.

A/B test measurement setup:

Marc sets up GA4 to measure test results reliably: custom dimensions, experiment segments, and conversion tracking that gives clean before-and-after data regardless of which testing tool is in use.

Post-fix measurement:

Identifying a problem and fixing it is only half the work. Marc sets up measurement that confirms whether the fix actually improved performance and flags if something else broke in the process.

Who this is for.

Businesses with traffic but disappointing conversion rates. The acquisition is working. The website is not converting what it should. The question is where the problem actually is.

Businesses running paid media who do not trust their conversion data. If the tracking underneath the campaigns is unreliable, optimisation decisions are being made against bad numbers. Marc fixes the measurement first, then identifies what to improve.

CRO agencies and developers who need better data. Marc works alongside CRO teams and developers who need an analytics specialist to provide the quantitative layer: reliable GA4 data, clean event tracking, and measurement infrastructure that makes test results trustworthy.

E-commerce businesses with checkout drop-off. High add-to-cart rates and low purchase rates usually mean a specific problem in the checkout flow. Marc finds it.

Businesses preparing for a site redesign. A redesign without baseline behavioural data is guesswork. Marc establishes what is working and what is not before development starts, so decisions about what to change are evidence-based rather than assumed.

Frequently asked questions.

Do you run A/B tests? Yes, where appropriate. Marc runs tests and sets up GA4 to measure results reliably using custom dimensions, experiment segments, and conversion tracking that produces clean before-and-after data.

Do I need ContentSquare to work with you? No. Marc works with whichever behavioural tool the business already has: ContentSquare, Hotjar, or Microsoft Clarity. If there is no behavioural tool in place, Microsoft Clarity is free and integrates directly with GA4, making it a practical starting point for most businesses.

How is this different from a standard GA4 audit? A GA4 audit focuses on whether the tracking is correct. CRO analysis uses that tracking, once it is reliable, to answer a different question: where are conversions being lost and why. The two often run together because broken tracking is frequently the first thing that needs fixing before CRO analysis is meaningful.

What if our GA4 tracking is not reliable yet? That is common and it is not a blocker. It just means fixing the tracking is part of the engagement. Marc handles both the measurement infrastructure and the conversion analysis, so there is no handoff problem between fixing the analytics and analysing the conversions.

Can you work with our existing CRO agency or UX team? Yes. Marc regularly provides the analytics and behavioural data layer to support CRO agencies, UX designers, and product teams who need reliable data to inform their decisions. He can work as a specialist input into a broader team rather than as the sole external resource.

Ready to make your analytics decision-grade?

Book a free 30-minute consultation to discuss your challenges and explore how Marc can help.

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