GA4 Reports: A Comprehensive Guide to Metrics

Before GA4, there was….

….UA….

And, before UA, there was….

…GA….

And, before GA, there was….

….Urchin?

Okay… Seriously, I do not know who’s answerable for naming stuff at Google. But here we’re.

Google Analytics 4 (GA4) as an analytics tool for website and app performance.

GA4 is ready to exchange Universal Analytics, which is the present generation of Google Analytics software utilized by 86% of internet sites on the Web with traffic evaluation tools installed.

Within the digital marketing world, it’s just like the recent model of your favorite automobile. The response is split. Some marketers like it. Some hate it.

But we’re all going to need to take it for a spin because UA is ready to sunset in July of 2023 and GA4 will replace it permanently.

On this guide, we’re going to dive deep into GA4 reports — covering the metrics, conversions, visualizations, and more.

Understanding tips on how to master the Reports tab in GA4 is crucial for anyone whose work involves marketing campaigns, search engine optimization, website engagement and retention, e-commerce, or absolutely anything else you’d need to track.

Understanding the GA4 Reports Tab

First, let’s get oriented.

GA4 Reports tab is the central hub for accessing and analyzing data in a GA4 property.

These are the reports available in GA4:

• Reporting Snapshot
• Realtime
• Acquisition
  • Overview
  • User Acquisition
  • Traffic Acquisition
• Engagement
  • Overview
  • Events
  • Conversions
  • Pages and Screens
  • Landing Page
• Monetization
  • Ecommerce Purchases
  • In-App Purchases
  • Publisher Ads
  • Promotions
• Retention
• Demographics
  • Overview
  • Demographic Details
• Tech

On this guide, we’ll walk through each section and explore how you could use the info to tell marketing campaigns, ad spend, and more.

But before we get into the weeds, it’s essential to notice which you could break down all the reports into two foremost types:

1. Overview Reports: high-level summary of key metrics (e.g., user acquisition, engagement rate, event count)
2. Detail Reports: specific dimensions and metrics for detailed evaluation (e.g., demographics, device category, event name)

GA4 also offers some recent report features corresponding to path exploration and exploration reports, but we’ll cover those in a separate guide.

For this text, we’ll work our way straight down the list of reports along the left menu.

Reporting Snapshot

When you’re in search of the quickest sense of how your website is performing, you then can pop right into the Reporting Snapshot.

You may consider this page as a pre-built analytics dashboard.

It blends data from all the other reports right into a single view that provides you a general sense of how much traffic you’re receiving, where your traffic is coming from, and what actions users are taking up your website.

Real-Time Reporting in GA4

Realtime reports in GA4 work almost the identical way as they did in Universal Analytics. You may get a real-time snapshot of the users in your website during the last half-hour.

You’ll see key data corresponding to:

• Energetic users
• Top energetic pages
• Top events
• Geographic data

The realtime report is a cool technique to see what’s happening right this second. But when you must dive right into a more comprehensive evaluation, understand behavior across a user’s life cycle, or compare metrics across different date ranges, you then’ll must dig into the relevant reports below.

Acquisition Reports

Acquisition is about understanding how users got to your website.

Contained in the acquisition section, you’ll see 3 different reports.

1. Acquisition Overview

The Overview report is comparable to the Snapshot above but looks only at metrics related to acquisition. You may see a mixture of knowledge concerning the way users find your website plus which channels or campaigns are driving essentially the most traffic.

2. User Acquisition

The User Acquisition report filters your traffic to only have a look at how Latest Users arrived at your website for the primary time. This is useful if you must higher understand how persons are learning about your website and assist you to with digital marketing attribution.

Mainly: How did people find us in the primary place?

As an example, you could be wondering: Do more people find our website through Instagram and then click on an ad? Or do they click on the ad first after which find us through Instagram?

The default view for the User Acquisition report would assist you to answer that query by showing you the First User interaction by default channel group.

You can too toggle this report by clicking the dropdown and grouping acquisition by other dimensions like Source, Medium, or Campaign.

3. Traffic Acquisition

This report shows much the identical data as User Acquisition, nevertheless it isn’t filtered to indicate only Latest Users. As an alternative, it means that you can see the source or channel that drove traffic to your website – no matter whether it’s that user’s first visit or their hundredth.

The default channel grouping will break down your traffic into buckets like referral traffic from other web sites, organic traffic from search engines like google, paid search ads, email marketing, and other common buckets.

Engagement Reports

So now we all know where the traffic is coming from. But what do they do once they get to our website?

That’s what Engagement Reports are all about.

This data will assist you to answer key questions like:

• Which content was hottest in your website?
• Which links did people click on?
• What number of users accomplished goals or purchases?
• Which pages brought people to the web site in the primary place?

Mainly, we’re about to show this analytics get-together into an analytics party.

1. Overview

As expected, the Overview is once more like a snapshot of the info shown below.

Here you may get a high-level summary of the main points you’ll find in the following reports.

2. Events Report

Events report is where the magic happens.

Here you’ll give you the option to see granular data concerning the actions your website visitors are taking.

By default, you’ll see things like page_view, scroll, click, first_visit, and more.

(“Page Views” are considered an event on GA4.)

You may create as much as 50 custom GA4 events to trace things like sign-ups, subscriptions, or other actions.

When you click on each event, you may drill down further to see more information concerning the actions, when and where they occurred, and other details.

3. Conversions Report

Along with all the events in your website, it’s likely that a few of these actions represent an actual conversion that’s correlated with sales or revenue.

As an example, when a user creates an account or makes a purchase order.

If you configure GA4 events, you may indicate whether each specific event must be treated as a conversion. When you mark the event as a conversion, then those events will appear on this special report.

This offers you a filtered view of the conversions which have been accomplished. And you may drill all the way down to see where those conversions got here from and other relevant information.

(Nerd note: In GA4, events marked as Conversions have completely replaced “Goals”.)

4. Pages and Screens

This report is comparable to the “Page Views” report that you could be used to seeing in Universal Analytics.

You may quickly see which pages in your website have racked up essentially the most views, have been visited by essentially the most users, and have contributed the very best variety of conversions.

The default report will show pages by their title, but should you are used to browsing pages by their URL, you then can change the view from the dropdown above the list of pages.

5. Landing Pages

Landing pages are the primary pages that a user sees once they come to your website on any given session. It’s like should you had a large house with dozens or tons of (or hundreds) of front doors. It’s possible you’ll need to know which of them your guests are using.

(Because obviously, if you’ve gotten a house that big, you’ve gotten guests coming and going continuously.)

The Landing Page report principally tells you which of them door(s) your visitors use most steadily.

This offers you sense of which pages or content are most tasty to users, getting essentially the most visibility in organic search results, or generating essentially the most buzz on social media.

Monetization Reports

As you almost certainly guessed by the name, Monetization Reports are built to assist you to understand how and where your website is generating actual revenue.

1. Overview

Get a snapshot of the revenue your website generated, the variety of purchases made, the typical value across your visitors, and more from the Monetization Overview report.

2. Ecommerce Purchases

If you’ve gotten an e-commerce website or an internet store, it is best to configure ecommerce tracking inside GA4.

This may help you see all of the purchases made in your website, browse your specific products to see that are hottest / generating essentially the most revenue, and other data that may assist you to optimize sales and grow your corporation.

3. In-app Purchases

In case your website or mobile app offers users the prospect to make a purchase order (e.g., buying extra spins on that virtual slot machine or signing up for a paid subscription to your SaaS), you may configure that motion as an in-app purchase.

You then’ll give you the option to make use of this report back to see all of the in-app purchases and knowledge about who made those purchases and where they occurred.

To set this up, you’ll simply need to fireplace an event named “in_app_purchase” when a purchase order is accomplished.

4. Publisher Ads

Suppose your website or mobile app is monetized with advertisements. In that case, this report will assist you to see how much you’re earning, which ads are generating essentially the most revenue, and which pages are generating essentially the most impressions and clicks on the ads.

This report integrates directly with Google Ad Manager or AdMob to generate data. When you’re using one other ad network, you then’ll must pass ad data manually.

5. Promotions

The ultimate monetization report is the Promotions Report.

This simplifies the best way that you just track promotions like special offers, discounts, and coupons. Whereas you might have created custom tracking parameters and other systems in Universal Analytics, you may now directly configure specific promotions after which track their impact on revenue.

As an example, you may run a banner offering 10% off a product after which measure to see what number of purchases and the way much revenue that specific promotion generated.

Retention Report

Parting is such sweet sorrow.

But in case your retention metrics are right, you then won’t even sweat it —  You already know those users will likely be right back.

The Retention Report gives you a straightforward snapshot of what number of recent users are visiting your website versus the variety of returning users.

You may take it one step further by retention over time, retention by cohort, and other advanced reports that assist you to higher understand if and when users are most certainly to come back back to your site in the longer term.

Demographics Report

Do you ever wish you can just walk up and shake the hand of your website visitors and get to know them?

Well, that will be a bit creepy.

But you may at the very least learn a bit more about them from a distance with the Demographics Report.

1. Overview

The Demographics Overview report shows you all types of knowledge concerning the individuals who visit your website:

• City and Country
• Language
• Age
• Interests
• Gender

You may see in case your website tends to draw visitors from certain parts of the world or if it’s more popular with men or women. This might be helpful whenever you’re eager about future marketing and promotional activities.

2. Demographic Details

This report overlays the demographic data from the Overview with Engagement Report data.

Now you may see not only which groups are visiting your website most steadily, but additionally which groups are most engaged, make essentially the most purchases, spend essentially the most time in your website, and more.

Tech Report

The Tech Report shows you which of them devices, systems, and browsers people use when visiting your website.

Overview

The Overview shows a breakdown much like the Demographics Report, highlighting the forms of systems and devices which might be used more steadily by users coming to your site.

Tech Details

The Tech Details, also much like the Demographic Details, correlates different technology and devices utilized by your website visitors with Engagement data.

It’s possible you’ll give you the option to make use of this data to discover issues like poor site performance on certain screens or browsers.

Navigating and Customizing GA4 Reports

Now that we’ve gone all over the world, let’s quickly zoom in on some ways which you could use the Reports Tab to higher understand your audience and make data-driven decisions about your website and your corporation.

Applying Filters

Filters help you have a look at specific segments of your traffic and higher understand how certain groups of users interact along with your site.

To use a filter, simply open any of the detailed reports we’ve covered on this guide.

Find the “Add filter” button under the report name and click on on it.

From here, you may create a custom filter based on as much as 5 dimensions.

Comparisons

With comparisons, you may see how two groups interact side-by-side. As an example, you may have a look at how organic search traffic compares to paid search traffic.

To create a comparison from any GA4 report, simply click the “Add comparison” button above the report title.

Then, configure a comparison based on the dimension you must segment.

Date Ranges

Every GA4 report (except realtime reports) shows data from a selected range of time.

By default, the reports will show the Last 28 Days. But you may change the date range at any time by simply clicking on the date range shown within the top-right corner of the report and setting a brand new range.

Search Bar

Not finding what you’re in search of in GA4?

Try using the search bar!

At the highest of the GA4 window, you’ll discover a search bar where you may search for specific reports or data. You can too ask plain-language questions using the Analytics Intelligence feature.

Custom Reports

The default reports offer a whole lot of data, but depending on the web site and the business, you could need a different concoction.

The “Custom Reports” feature is sort of a build-your-own sundae bar for analytics.

Select your favorite dimensions, metrics, and filters, then mix and match to create a one-of-a-kind report. Whether you like a straightforward overview or a decadent data feast, custom reports satisfy every analytics craving.

To create a novel report, just click “Library” at the underside of the Reports tab menu.

You may even customize the usual report templates to get them to indicate data in only the best way you want.

(Note: You’ll need Editor or Admin access to view the Library.)

Going Beyond the Reports Tab

Alright, so we’ve covered a ton of reports you’ll find in GA4. But, really, we’ve only scratched the surface of what kind of knowledge you may compile and analyze.

Here’s just a few additional things you could need to explore:

Explorations and Visualizations

Certainly one of GA4’s hottest recent features is the Explorations tab.

Since we’re focused on the Report tab in this text, we won’t cover all of the main points for tips on how to use it. But, suffice to say that Explorations unlocks an entire recent set of capabilities.

With GA4 Explorations, you may conduct free-form data evaluation and construct custom visualizations.

As an example, you may create a Funnel Exploration to assist you to higher understand how users arrive in your website after which flow through it. You can too explore specific user paths with the Path Exploration and compare audience segments (including secondary dimensions!) visually with a Segment Overlap evaluation.

Integrations

When you’re really able to roll up your sleeves, your ability to construct custom GA4 reports is barely limited by your imagination (and your technical skills).

GA4 comes with an enormous range of native integrations and might share data with a lot of the common Google products and other data evaluation tools.

• GA4 integrates with Google Tag Manager for custom event tracking and conversions.
• GA4 integrates with BigQuery for advanced data evaluation using SQL-like commands.
• GA4 might be linked with Google Search Console for search engine optimization evaluation and optimization.

That’s All GA4 Now, Folks

Hopefully you’ve found this review of GA4 reports helpful.

Although there’s some big changes from UA, getting used to the new edition of Analytics will just take time. After just a few months, you’ll be a professional who doesn’t think twice about pulling the proper report from the info stream.

Until GA5 comes out….or regardless of the heck they determine to call the following one.