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Have you upgraded to Google Analytics 4 but feel overwhelmed by the sheer number of reports at your disposal? You’re not alone. Upgrading to Google Analytics 4 unlocks a wide range of valuable insights, but for busy marketers, skimming through every report can feel like searching for a needle in a data haystack.
This guide simplifies the process by focusing on the reports that directly align with your business and marketing goals. It cuts through the clutter and aims to spotlight the essential GA4 reports. We talk about user acquisition, engagement, key events (previously conversions), and more, giving you a focused view of your digital performance.
Even better, we will show you where to find these reports, explain why they matter, and provide tips to find specific user reports. Get ready to transform your analytics routine from tedious and overwhelming to a data-driven decision-making machine!
Before we get to the key reports, let’s ensure you are set up correctly on Google Analytics 4 (GA4). As you might already know, proper implementation is crucial for accurate data collection and analysis. Take these steps to get started on GA4. (If you’ve already set up GA4, skip this section.)
The first step is to create or log in to your Google Analytics account. If you are new to Analytics, head to analytics.google.com and click on “Start for free.” If you already have an account, simply log in using your credentials. This centralised platform will house all your GA4 properties and data streams.
Those creating a new Analytics account will need to provide some basic information about their business. This account will serve as an umbrella for all your GA4 properties (websites or apps). Choose descriptive names to easily identify and manage your properties later.
Once your account is set up, it is now time to create a new GA4 property.
A data stream connects your data to GA4. After creating your property, you will be asked to set up a data stream. Choose the platform you want to track – web or app. For websites, you will need details like the URL and stream name. For apps, provide the app name, bundle ID (iOS), or package name (Android).
With your property and data stream configured, GA4 will generate a unique Google tag (for websites). For app setup, you need to download a config file, add the SDK to your app, and then verify your installation to register your app. This snippet of code needs to be added to your website or app for GA4 to start collecting data. Copy the code and keep it handy for the next step. For websites, you can also choose to use Google Tag Manager for easier tag management.
The final step is to install the Google tag or Analytics tracking code on your website or app. For websites, add the tag to the <head> section of each page you want to track. For apps, follow the platform-specific instructions to integrate the tracking code into your app’s codebase. Once installed, GA4 will start gathering data immediately.
With GA4 properly set up, you are now ready to explore the powerful reports and unlock valuable insights about your users and their behaviour!
As businesses continue to expand their online presence, understanding user behaviour and website/app performance becomes quite vital for decision-making. You can count on Google Analytics 4 reporting to make things easier. GA4’s comprehensive reporting capabilities provide valuable insights that help companies analyse their digital marketing efforts and many other essential metrics.
When businesses leverage these reports effectively, they can identify areas for improvement and drive better results. It is fair to say that GA4 reporting has become an indispensable tool for any organisation looking to succeed online. Here are the two key reasons why we believe these reports are so important.
Speed and agility are critical to staying ahead of the competition. You can no longer afford to wait weeks or months to gain insights into your digital performance – you need real-time data to adapt and evolve quickly.
Imagine launching a marketing campaign without access to real-time analytics. You’d be forced to wait until the campaign ended before evaluating its performance, missing valuable opportunities to optimise and course-correct along the way. This delay could prove costly, especially if the campaign isn’t resonating with your target audience.
With Google Analytics 4’s real-time reporting capabilities, businesses can proactively monitor campaigns as they unfold. As a result, they can now make data-driven adjustments on the fly. This agility is particularly crucial in e-commerce, where a sudden drop in sales could be a sign of technical issues or a competitor’s promotional offer. Immediate insights enable swift identification and resolution of problems that end up preventing prolonged revenue slumps.
One of Google Analytics 4’s standout features is its emphasis on customisation and flexibility. Unlike previous versions, GA4 doesn’t overwhelm users with a multitude of pre-built reports. This approach is intentional and not a limitation.
Google recognised that every business is unique with its own specific goals and requirements. Pre-defined reports cannot cater to the diverse needs of all organisations. Instead, GA4 provides a clean slate that empowers users to tailor their reports to align with their unique business models and objectives.
Rather than offering numerous reports to accommodate most scenarios, GA4 focuses on providing a baseline set of essential reports. Users can then build upon these foundational reports by using them as templates or creating entirely customised versions.
This level of flexibility ensures that businesses are tracking the metrics that matter the most to them. Whether you are an e-commerce store, a SaaS company, or a content publisher, GA4’s customisable reporting allows you to keep a laser-sharp focus on the data that drives your success.
When working with Google Analytics 4, you will come across two key elements — metrics and reports. While they may seem similar at first glance, they serve distinct purposes in helping you analyse and understand your website or app’s performance data.
Metrics are the individual data points or measurements that provide specific insights into various aspects of user behaviour and digital activities. These are the raw numbers that GA4 collects, such as views, bounce rates, average session duration, key event rates, and so on. Metrics give you granular visibility into particular dimensions of your online performance.
Reports, on the other hand, are comprehensive presentations that combine and organise multiple metrics into a cohesive story. Think of reports as the bigger picture that puts relevant individual metric numbers into context. GA4 reports aggregate data from various metrics, often displaying it through visualisations like charts, graphs, and tables. This makes the information more digestible and easier to interpret holistically.
The key difference lies in their purpose and scope. Metrics are the building blocks that capture precise data points, while reports are the constructed narratives that weave those data points together to reveal larger trends, patterns, and opportunities for optimisation.
Additionally, GA4 reports offer more flexibility compared to metrics alone. You can customise reports to focus on specific metrics, date ranges, audience segments, or other dimensions that align with your unique business goals and KPIs. This tailored approach ensures you are analysing the data most relevant to your needs.
Now, it’s time to look at some of the most crucial GA4 reports you should track. Here we go:
The Traffic Acquisition Report is a pre-built, detailed report in Google Analytics 4 that provides invaluable insights into where your website and app visitors are coming from. Unlike the User Acquisition Report, which focuses solely on new users, the Traffic Acquisition Report encompasses both new and returning visitors, giving you a comprehensive view of your traffic sources.
One of the key strengths of this report lies in its cross-channel traffic source dimensions. These dimensions are product-agnostic, meaning they span across organic and paid traffic sources, Google-paid platforms, third-party paid sources, and publisher or inventory sources. This comprehensive approach allows you to dig deeper into your user acquisition strategies regardless of the specific channels or platforms involved.
When you track the Traffic Acquisition Report, you can gain a granular understanding of which channels and sources are driving the most traffic to your website or app. This information is crucial for optimising your marketing efforts and identifying areas for improvement or untapped opportunities.
To access this report:
Picture 1: Traffic Accusation Report.
If you don’t see the report listed, it may have been removed or is not included in your default report set, depending on which business objective you set. It only shows by default if you selected “Generate leads” or “Baseline reports” as your objectives. If you are an editor or administrator, you can easily add the report to the left navigation panel.
The Pages and Screens Report is another crucial report to monitor regularly. This provides valuable insights into user behaviour across your website and mobile app. This pre-made report offers a wealth of information about the individual pages users visit on your website and the screens they engage with on your mobile app. You can gain a deep understanding of where your users are spending their time and how they navigate through your digital properties by analysing this data.
Here are the simple steps to access the Pages and Screens Report:
Picture 2: Pages and Screens Report.
If the report isn’t visible, it may have been removed or may not be part of your default report set. The Pages and Screens Report shows you which pages and screens people are visiting, providing context about their overall journey.
This report helps you understand the user flow, whether it is the landing page that attracted them initially or a page they discovered later in their session. You can optimise your user experience accordingly by identifying areas of high engagement or potential drop-off points.
The next report you should keep a keen eye on is the Landing Page Report. This report provides valuable insights into how visitors interact with your website. It focuses on the first page a visitor lands on when they arrive at your site and thus offers crucial information to optimise your website’s performance and enhance the user experience.
When you analyse the data in the Landing Page Report, you can identify top-performing pages that drive engagement and pinpoint areas that need improvement. This report enables you to make data-driven decisions to refine your content, layout, and overall strategy, ultimately leading to better user experiences and increased conversions.
Picture 3: Landing Page Report in GA4
Follow these simple steps to access the Landing Page Report in GA4:
The Landing Page Report offers filtering and search capabilities, allowing you to dive deeper into the performance of specific landing pages. You can add a secondary dimension of Session default channel grouping to see where the traffic is coming from that lands on these pages. This will help you understand what marketing channels are working to drive traffic where, and whether that specific traffic is engaging and taking actions on your site.
The E-commerce Purchase Report is a crucial tool for online businesses to track and analyse their sales performance. This report is only available for e-commerce sites and provides valuable insights into the products or services sold on your online store. You will gain a comprehensive understanding of your customers’ purchasing behaviour and make data-driven decisions to optimise your sales strategy thanks to this GA4 report.
Follow these simple steps to view the E-commerce Purchase Report:
It is important to note that e-commerce data is not automatically collected by Google Analytics. Ensure that your report is populated with accurate information by sending e-commerce events from your website or mobile app.
You should also pay close attention to the required parameters when setting up these events. This is because missing any required parameters will cause the event to be treated as a custom event and exclude it from the E-commerce Purchase Report.
The Demographic Details Report provides valuable insights into the characteristics of your website or app users. Gain a deeper understanding of your audience by accessing this pre-made detailed report, which includes key information like;
The data in this report is aggregated and only includes information from users who have consented to share their demographics. GA4 also applies data thresholds when user counts are low, ensuring the privacy of your end users is protected.
You also have to take note that Age, Gender, and Interest data will only be available once Google Signals is enabled in your GA4 property. Without Google Signals, these dimensions will not be populated in the report.
Use these simple steps to access the Demographics Details Report in GA4;
Picture 4: Demographics Details Report
Once you have accessed the report, you will have access to a wealth of information about your users. You can explore dimensions like age and interests to gain a comprehensive understanding of your audience. Use this data to tailor your content, marketing strategies, and user experience to better serve your target demographic.
No doubt, leveraging the power of the Demographics Details Report allows you to connect with your audience on a deeper level and drive success for your website or app.
While we have already covered the crucial reports that you must monitor regularly, there are other reports that you should keep an eye on. These are;
GA4 offers a powerful set of tools called “Explorations’’ that allow you to thoroughly explore your website or e-commerce store’s performance. These advanced discovery and comparison tools help you uncover valuable insights and make fact-based decisions.
GA4 provides seven main types of explorations:
To create your custom exploration report, do this:
Taking advantage of GA4’s Exploration reports allows you to gain a deeper understanding of your users’ behaviour, identify areas for improvement, and make informed decisions to optimise your online presence. It is a no-brainer that you should embrace the power of data-driven insights and take your website or e-commerce store to new heights with this report!
GA4 also gives you access to reports from 3rd party tools. Let’s look at the ones you should monitor on your site.
One particularly important subset of traffic is known as organic search traffic. This term refers to the visitors who land on your site by clicking on the natural, unpaid search results that appear in search engines like Google. When someone types a query into a search engine, the results that show up, excluding the paid ads, are the organic search results.
It offers a more comprehensive and insightful look into user behaviour, allowing you to track the specific search terms and keywords that bring people to your website. This valuable data can be used to optimise your content and SEO strategies, thus ensuring that your website is attracting the right audience.
Picture 5:Google Organic Search Traffic Report
The key difference between organic search traffic and paid traffic is that the former is not only free but also tends to consist of users who are genuinely interested in what you have to offer. These visitors have actively searched for something relevant to your content, found your website in their search results, and decided to click through. Therefore, it is crucial to monitor the Google Organic Search Traffic Report as you can tap into a valuable source of potential customers and grow your online presence effectively.
Monitoring the Google Ads Campaigns Report in GA4 is crucial for businesses and marketers who want to maximise the effectiveness of their advertising efforts. This report provides insights into how well your Google Ads campaigns are performing in terms of driving traffic and conversions to your website or app. Regularly reviewing this report ensures that you make fact-based decisions to optimise your campaigns and allocate your advertising budget more efficiently.
For example, let’s say you are running an e-commerce website that sells outdoor gear. You have set up multiple Google Ads campaigns targeting different keywords and audiences. When you analyse the Google Ads Campaigns Report, you discover that one particular campaign, focused on hiking boots, is generating a significantly higher number of sessions and total revenue compared to the others.
This insight allows you to shift more of your budget towards the successful hiking boots campaign, while pausing or adjusting the underperforming ones. Making these data-driven optimisations helps you improve your overall return on ad spend (ROAS) and drive more valuable traffic to your website.
Accessing this report is simple:
Taking full advantage of user-level insights in GA4 can be a game-changer for understanding your audience. While traditional reports offer valuable aggregate data, identifying specific user behaviour requires a more targeted approach. For that reason, let’s look at tips you can use to pinpoint the exact user reports you need within GA4. With these tips, you can easily personalise experiences and optimise your marketing strategies with laser focus.
For those seeking user-level detail in GA4, the Explorations feature is an invaluable tool. It goes beyond pre-defined reports by allowing you to construct custom analyses. This allows you to pinpoint specific user data by combining relevant dimensions and metrics.
Think of dimensions as categories that define your users (e.g., User ID, demographics). Metrics, on the other hand, represent measurable values like events triggered or conversions achieved. When you strategically select these elements, you can craft reports that provide a granular view of individual user behaviour within GA4.
GA4’s segmentation capabilities add another layer of precision to your user analysis. Let’s say you want to understand how mobile users behave compared to desktop users. Segments allow you to isolate these groups based on device type.
Once created, you can leverage the segments within other reports and visualisations in GA4. This lets you analyse specific user reports tailored to these distinct audience segments and get a more comprehensive understanding of user behaviour.
Filters function as a useful researcher’s tool that allows you to isolate specific user segments for focused analysis. You can imagine a scenario where you require insights into a particular user group, such as those residing in a specific geographic region or those who have interacted with a designated product page. Filters give you the ability to achieve this with great precision.
Note that you can easily craft these filters based on a variety of criteria, including user demographics, behavioural patterns, and even the source of their website traffic. Strategically applying filters helps you refine your user reports, eliminating extraneous data and ensuring a laser focus on the user segments that hold the key to unlocking valuable insights.
GA4 offers a powerful built-in search function designed to streamline your exploration of user reports. Located conveniently at the top of the page, this search bar allows you to leverage keywords related to the specific report you require.
Picture 6: The Search Function in GA4
For instance, if you are seeking reports that talk about user engagement, simply enter “engagement” or “user engagement” into the search bar. This will generate a list of relevant reports within GA4, saving you valuable time and facilitating a more efficient user analysis process.
While this guide has highlighted some of the most crucial GA4 reports, it merely scratches the surface of the extensive insights and capabilities this powerful platform offers. Consistently monitoring the reports covered here will help you gain a solid foundation for understanding your audience and driving business growth.
GA4 is not just a reporting tool – it’s a decision engine. Mastering its capabilities allows businesses to stop guessing and start optimising every digital touchpoint with precision.
However, to truly unlock the full potential of GA4 reports and enhance your digital analytics mastery, we strongly recommend that you enrol in our Digital Marketing Analytics (GA4) course. Accredited by SkillsFuture Singapore and taught by industry-leading experts, this course will equip you with advanced strategies and certified best practices to thrive in the constantly changing analytics sector.
Don’t settle for surface-level knowledge when you can gain a competitive edge through specialised training. Empower yourself with the skills to extract maximum value from GA4 reports and propel substantial online success for your business!
Dhawal is the Managing Director at 2Stallions Digital Marketing Agency, an award-winning full-service digital marketing agency, based out of Singapore that he co-founded in 2012. It has grown from a founding team of 2 to a team of 20, and growing, across 4 countries. He has overseen more than 250 successful digital marketing projects with clients ranging from startups to MNCs.
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Dhawal is the Managing Director at 2Stallions Digital Marketing Agency, an award-winning full-service digital marketing agency, based out of Singapore that he co-founded in 2012. It has grown from a founding team of 2 to a team of 20, and growing, across 4 countries. He has overseen more than 250 successful digital marketing projects with clients ranging from startups to MNCs.
Receive the latest blog articles right into your inbox.
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