The 15-minute setup that exposed a phantom conversion problem

The 15-minute setup that exposed a phantom conversion problem

A lead-gen site for a law firm reported a 9% form conversion rate. Strong, on paper. But intake was thin. The dashboard and the front desk told different stories.

The verification playbook:
— Find the thank-you page URL and confirm it's the real one, not a soft modal
— Set a conversion on that exact page_view in GA4
— Then add a second event firing only on the form's success callback
— Compare the two counts side by side for a week
— Investigate any page that loads without the success event

The page-view count was inflated by people landing on the thank-you URL directly from Google. The true success-callback count was 41% lower. Real conversion wasn't 9%, it was 5.3%.

Lesson: a thank-you page-view is not a conversion. Measure the success event, or you'll celebrate traffic that never filled out anything.