Optimiseer uw website met GA4 Rapporten

Tracking campaign performance and analysing various metrics is an essential part of online marketing. Given that online marketers have been accustomed to working with Google Universal Analytics (UA) for years, the announcement of the release of a new Google analytics platform was quite a shift.

As of 1 July 2023, Google Universal Analytics is a thing of the past, and your website traffic data is now stored in Google Analytics 4 (GA4). The transition from Google Universal Analytics to Google Analytics 4 can take some getting used to. Using this article, we will explain how to view the desired data in Google Analytics 4 to increase your online success.

Reports in GA4

The reports that were visible by default in Google UA no longer exist. The statistics you were used to looking at over the past few years have disappeared. Now you will have to set up the desired reports yourself to be able to view the desired data in, for example, a dashboard or report overview.

In the library within ‘Reports’ in GA4, several templates for using reports are already ready for you, also called ‘collections’. We will explain different collections to you.

If you cannot see the library under ‘Reports’, this is because you do not have the correct permissions within that Google Analytics property.

Standard Reports

There are three collections that are automatically created within every GA4 account as standard. These collections contain standard reports with the data that is most frequently accessed within Google Analytics. These are the following collections:

• Lifecycle
• Business objectives
• User

Lifecycle

Curious about how users actually experience your website or app? With the lifecycle collection, you gain valuable insights into user behaviour, from initial contact to their lasting engagement. The lifecycle collection includes acquisition, engagement, monetisation, and retention reports.

 

Acquisition

One of the most common use cases for Google Analytics is to see where visitors are coming from. GA4 can display this data, but some parts of the interface can be confusing compared to Universal Analytics. The acquisition data is in the standard report of the lifecycle collection.

The main thing you can see in acquisition is where visitors come from, whether it's via organic search, also known as SEO, via Google Ads, or directly. Within the acquisition reports, in addition to the data on where visitors come from, you can also see the regions your visitors come from, through which channels or campaigns they arrived on your site, and the ratio between new and returning users.

 

Engagement

Besides being able to see where visitors come from in the acquisition reports, you can also view user engagement. Engagement is understood to be event interactions with your site. Among other things, user engagement, engagement duration, user loyalty, and scroll depth are important components of engagement.

Every event a visitor performs on your site is stored within GA4. If a visitor comes to your site for the first time, scrolls a bit, clicks a link to go to another page, and then leaves your site, the following events will be measured and shown in the events report within the engagement collection:

The user …, and the measured event is ….

visits the homepage > first_visit, page_view & session_start

scrolls a bit > scroll

gaat door naar de volgende pagina > user_engagement

arrives on the second page > page_view

leave the website > user_engagement

Above is an example of how this could work in practice. However, you will first need to set up events yourself from your website via Google Tag Manager. Standard events can be found in Google's overview find.

 

Generate income

In addition to user acquisition and engagement, you can also view e-commerce revenue data within the lifecycle collection. Here, you can see your e-commerce, subscription, and advertising revenue in one overview. You can also track revenue over time to identify user trends and monitor campaign success. This is a useful report for keeping an eye on your conversion rate as an online shop.

 

Conservation

The retention report consists of individual cards that summarise the retention data of all users. In this report, you can see, among other things, the difference between new and returning users, user loyalty, user engagement and lifetime value.

Furthermore, you can also view user loyalty and user engagement per cohort. In contrast to the general data on user loyalty and user engagement, this is measured per cohort (per period since the first session). It measures the loyalty and engagement from users 7 and 30 days later.

 

Business objectives

With the Business Goals collection, you'll see a personalised set of reports based on the information you provided about your organisation during the initial configuration of Google Analytics. The first time you started Google Analytics since switching from Universal Analytics to GA4, you were asked a number of questions about your organisation and the purpose for which you want to use GA4. Once you've answered these questions, GA4 will have compiled a number of standard reports for you based on this information.

The possible reports you may see after completing a goal:

• Leadgeneratie
• Boost online sales
• Increase brand awareness
• Investigating user behaviour
• Benchmark reports

For each of these goals, a number of standard reports are shown that should help you achieve these goals.

 

Leadgeneratie

For this purpose, you will be shown all reports related to user acquisition, traffic acquisition, audiences, and landing pages. These reports will help provide you with insights into visitor statistics so that you can more easily attract new customers and leads.

 

Boost online sales

For this purpose, you will be shown standard reports relating to e-commerce purchases and promotions. These reports will help give you insights into your customers' buying behaviour so that you can increase the number of conversions and therefore your organisation's revenue.

 

Increase brand awareness

For this purpose, you will be shown standard reports relating to Google Ads campaigns, demographic data, and pages visited. These reports will help to provide you with insights into the type of visitors and which messages/pages are successful, allowing you to analyse how to further structure your business communications.

 

Investigating user behaviour

For this purpose, you will be shown standard reports relating to site events, conversions, and pages visited. These reports will help to give you insights into how visitors use your site, which will enable you to optimise it.

 

Benchmark reports

If you choose benchmark reports, you will see standard reports from the lifecycle collection. The lifecycle collection is the complete collection of all standard reports that can be used within the business objectives collection. Therefore, if you do not enter an objective, Google Analytics cannot determine which reports are important to you within the business objectives collection.

Can't remember which goal you once selected? Within GA4, you can see this by looking in the left column to see which report can be found under ‘Business goals’, or by looking which report can be found under the business goals collection within your library.

So, with benchmark reports, you have the freedom to decide for yourself which reports you want to see and which you don't. Do you want to know how to create your own reports from the library? This is explained further in this blog post under ‘Extended Reports’.

 

User

User collection allows you to get a clear picture of the people using your website. Among other things, you can see their demographic data, such as age and location, and the technology they use, such as the version of their browser or app. The user collection includes two parts: user characteristics and technology.

 

User characteristics

The user characteristics reports include demographic data and audiences. Using these reports, you can determine which audiences are the most engaged and profitable, and which countries/regions your most profitable and engaged visitors come from.

 

Technology

The technology reports consist of an overview and technical data. These components help you identify the technology people use to access your website, such as browser type, screen resolution, app version, and operating system type.

 

Comprehensive reports

It's possible that the standard reports are not sufficient for your situation. In that case, go to the library and check which other reports are available. In your library, you can create new reports and new collections.

 

Create new collection

You create a collection when there are multiple reports present in GA4 that you want to easily have in an overview in the left-hand column. In your library, you can click the large button with the colourful plus icon to create a new collection.

You can then opt for an empty collection that you fill yourself, or you can choose a template.

When you choose a template or an empty collection, you will enter a screen where you can select possible reports to add to this collection. These include both detailed reports and overview reports, which you can drag and drop into the collection to create your own overview.

 

Create new report

Besides being able to create a collection of existing reports, you can also create completely new reports. You create these by clicking the large blue button within your library.

You will then have the choice to create an overview report or a detailed report. An overview report can be thought of as a collection of reports in the form of a dashboard. A detailed report can be thought of as a completely new chart/table that you set up yourself based on dimensions, statistics, and other cards.

 

Summary Report

When you want to create an overview report, you will see an empty dashboard. Here you can add charts yourself. All existing diagrams and tables from the standard reports can be found here so that you can create a clear overview report/dashboard for yourself with only the most important reports.

 

Report details

If you want to create a new report, you can choose between a blank report or a template.

When you choose a template, you can specify your own dimensions and values for an existing report and change all settings to your own preferences based on the pre-filled settings that GA4 has added for the template. If you choose a blank report, you will have to add all dimensions, values, filters, charts, and cards yourself based on your preferences.

 

Compare reports

Besides creating your own reports or collections to get certain data into one overview, you can also compare reports with each other. To see, among other things, which segments your different visitors belong to, you can compare this data in your acquisition overview. At the top of the acquisition overview, you can add comparisons with user-defined dimensions.

You can also use the pencil icon on the top right to focus the overview of all acquisitions on the most relevant data for your situation.

But the most prominent way is by clicking the graph icon. Here you can add comparisons based on the report you currently have in front of you.

For example, when you are in the acquisition overview, you can add a comparison to ‘All users’. You do this by adding conditions based on custom or standard dimensions.

You can filter on various dimensions. Filtering can be done based on demographics, geography, a user's lifetime value, used platform/device, time, traffic source, and on self-made dimensions.

When filtering by dimensions, you can choose from standard GA4 dimensions or custom definitions. You create a custom definition when you want to measure an interaction on your website that is not being measured as an event within GA4. You create custom dimensions by going to ‘Admin’ and then to ‘Custom definitions’.

You create a new dimension by giving it a name, choosing a scope from Event, User or Item, and selecting an event parameter, user property or item parameter.

The application of custom dimensions is determined by the scope. The scope determines which data the dimension is applied to. For example, if you want to compare based on a custom event within GA4, you would choose ‘Event’ as the scope.

The values of these dimensions are provided by recorded event parameters, user properties, and item parameters. Choose a parameter or property from the list to use it as a custom dimension.

Do be careful when creating custom dimensions! If you create a custom dimension with a large number of unique values, this can have a negative effect on your reports. Always check first if the dimension you want to create already exists as a standard property or parameter.

 

Fill in reports

Now that you have a clear overview of the insights GA4 reports can offer, it's important that you collect data to populate these reports. The success of your analyses will depend on the accuracy and completeness of the data you collect. In today's world, where storing visitor data and cookies is increasingly made difficult by browsers, operating systems, and constantly changing GDPR legislation, collecting the right data in GA4 is becoming ever more challenging. Here at AdPage, we've responded to this by means of Server-Side Tagging.

By using server-side tagging, you ensure that you can continue to measure all your visitor data in a legal way, without interference from browsers, operating systems, and ad blockers. This will result in reliable and comprehensive GA4 reports. Don't hesitate any longer, take the next step towards data-driven success by choosing AdPage server-side tagging and thus maximising the value of your GA4 implementation.