Understand what Google Analytics 4 is and how you can leverage insights to make informed business decisions and capture more customers.
GA4 or Google Analytics 4 is Google’s latest version of Universal Analytics. This is a free tool that will allow you to track important data such as:
- Types of customers coming to your website
- Customer’s interests and demographics
- Where those customers are coming from
- Where customers may be struggling on your website
- Areas of your website that may be performing really well (or maybe not so well)
As a small business owner you may be asking yourself “Why should I even look into something like this? My website is doing great without it! (or) I don’t really care about my website! (or) I don’t have time, this is just another thing I have to keep track of.”
I hear you, and I understand. As a small business owner myself, it is easy to feel completely overwhelmed in the day to day grind. The beauty of GA4 is with a quick set up you can start tracking your customers within 48 hours. There is no upkeep or further dedication to GA4 required. You can even create your own custom insights which I will hit on later in this article.
How To Get Started In GA4
As mentioned earlier, GA4 is a Google powered service. To create a GA4 account, you will need to already have a google account (or a gmail). I included a step-by-step guide here to help you set up your account for the first time.
GA4 was released in the summer of 2023. Since then, many website platforms such as WordPress, Drupal and Squarespace have made it extremely easy to connect your account to your website. If you would like more information on connecting this yourself, I included those links in this article. If the guides provided by your website platform feels a little complicated, you can always send me an email and I would be more than happy to help set up your account and connect to your website. Contact me today to get started with your GA4 account.
Google also provides a very helpful tour or step by step process when you set up your account. It is extremely important you do not skip this guide. There are settings inside your account that need to be turned on to ensure you are pulling the right data from your website.
Understanding How GA4 Identifies User Data
When you first log into your Analytics account and data is pulling from your website, you will be taken to to a dashboard or the Reports Snapshot. This dashboard will be your main hub and insight on your website. Right away you will see something similar to the screenshot provided.
The most important takeaway when viewing your GA4 report or dashboard is understanding how the word “user” is defined. Users (or active users) are identified as someone who visits your website. Below you will see the different types of users you could see in your dashboard.
- New Users – people who have never visited your website before in a specific time frame.
- Returning Users – someone who comes back to your website. This number will help show you customer retention and customer loyalty
- Total Users – the total number of people who visit your site over a specific amount of time. By default, this will be measured in the last 28 days.
How to Understand User Data In Different Reports
Now that you understand how a user is defined, it will make reading the rest of your report easier. Your reports snapshot may look different than mine and is completely dependent on your business needs. This means, if you are an e-commerce shop or sell products online, you may want to have a snapshot of your revenue from the website. I have included a breakdown on my most commonly referenced reports in my account.
Types of Reports: User Acquisition Reports
New Users by First User Primary Channel is a quick snapshot of your user acquisition report. To put this simply, this report is showing you how your customers are coming to your site. You can either use this information to increase your efforts in certain channels or to leverage the channels that seem to be performing really well. It is completely up to you and your business model to determine what type of marketing mix you need to have.
- Direct – customers who put in your website or may have it bookmarked for quick access
- Organic Search – customers who looked for you on google or bing. This is a great way to see if your SEO(search engine optimization) is performing as it should. If you would like to learn more about SEO, I will have a blog in the coming weeks explaining this further.
- Referrals – customers who get to your website from another link on another website. If you often host a pop up event with another business, that business may have you mentioned and linked on their website.
- Social Media – customers who came to your website from your social media accounts such as Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter X and YouTube.
- Email Marketing – If you send out newsletters or announcements to your customers, they may get to your website from your email campaigns.
- Paid Search – If you run any advertising via ads display and customers click on those ads, those customers would fall under this channel.
Types of Reports: Pages and Screens
This report is my bread and butter. I rely on this report heavily to understand how my users interact with my website, how long they stay on the page, and where they go after visiting the page. I can also use this to help create custom reports such as a Path Exploration. This helps me see how my users navigate my site and where they tend to leave my site.
To understand more on how to create Explore Reports in GA4, I will provide a few of my favorite custom report guides and will link to a blog of mine on how to set this up in the coming months. For now, here are some of the key metrics provided in your report. You may have more or less metrics depending on your dashboard and business.
Key metrics to focus on with this report is:
- Views – the number of web pages viewed by a user. This number may not match active users because a customer could reload the page multiple times or revisiting the page multiple times.
- active users – how many customers you have visiting that page
- Views Per Active User – the rate which a user views a particular page. If this rate seems really high it could mean there is an issues with the page loading properly or not loading at all.
- Average Engagement Time Per Active User – this will be one of the most important metrics to keep an eye on. This number will tell you how long someone is interacting with your page. Depending on your industry or business, you may want this number to be higher or lower. By keeping users on your site as long as possible, it indicates that the user finds your information meaningful and will likely do business with you. Ways to increase engagement includes micro-animations, videos, or interactive elements on your website.
- Event Count – this is going to be any action taken on your site by a user. This would include clicks, file downloads, form fills or form starts, scrolls or interacting with a video player or podcast player. Event counts should coordinate with the average user engagement. This means, if the engagement rate seems high, we would expect a high event count such as someone filling out a contact us form.
How Often To Check Your GA4 Report
It is completely up to you and your business goals to determine how often you would like to look at your reports. I check mine roughly once a week. This helps me determine the types of articles to write and where my users seem to spend most of their time on my site. I also have clients who prefer monthly automated emails with the most relevant metrics for their business. If you are running an email marketing campaign or any paid advertising, you may want to check on your analytics more often.
Following a new website launch I recommend checking your website report at least every 30 days for the first 3 months. This will help ensure the site is running as it should, your customers are finding what they need, and see if there are any search terms or pages your customers may struggle to navigate to. Understanding your website data is the first step in determining your business goals and how you would like to see your business grow. Remember, your website is the face of your business and are designed to grow with you.
Protecting Yourself With Cookie Banners and Privacy Policies
As technology continues to advance, data privacy regulations such as GDPR and CPRA have made it a requirement for businesses to provide users the right to control how their data is being used. By adding GA4 to your website, you will need to update your privacy policy page and include a cookie banner to your site. GA4 collects data on your customers by creating a tracker called a cookie. In order for GA4 to function correctly, there is no way around tracking via cookies.
Many website platforms either have a cookie banner built into their platform that you can turn or plugins are available to install. For Privacy Policy pages, there are both free and paid services available to create copy to ensure you are covered properly. If you are a larger business or if you can afford it, working with a lawyer who understands the latest cookie laws would be recommended. I included resources below on how you can help ensure your website is compliant with the latest regulations. Please keep in mind, I am not a lawyer, the advice provided in this section is based on the industry standards practiced in the United States.
Helpful Resources
Path Exploration Report In Google Analytics 4
Iubenda Privacy Policy Generator
Get Terms Privacy Policy Maker
*Links provided are not sponsored or affiliated in any way. These are tools and resources I reference for my own business. I am not responsible or liable for tracking and data collected by the 3rd party links referenced in this article.