If you are bemoaning the change to the Google Analytics platform, you are not alone. The transition from Universal Analytics to GA4 has been rough, and some of us have dealt with it by sticking our heads in the sand and praying for the return of the old format.
Since that has not been working, it’s time to embrace learning to work with GA4.
1. If data is flowing, you are set up correctly
Google has a lot of dire warnings about accounts not being set up properly. That includes red banners up top and the occasional pop up encouraging you to connect your account to a previous Universal Analytics properly.
Despite these warnings, if you see data on the screen when you log in, your account is set up and collecting data.
If you were to click on the “complete setup” button, Google’s going to take you to a setup assistant that encourages you to set up conversions, create custom audiences, and collect data about ad personalization.
If you want to go through this process, more power to you, but if you’re not running ads, or dealing with a lot of audience segmentation, it may not be worthwhile.
I tell my clients that the best reports are built around data that’s going to help you run your business, not an arbitrary checklist from Google.
2. GA4 is all about conversions and revenue
GA4 has taken some big strides in putting forward a visual collection of data meant to support business analytics. The problem is that the reports they have assembled are largely tied to conversions and revenue.
If you have an ecommerce site, that’s probably good news. However, only about 30% of websites worldwide have an ecommerce component.
For the other 70%, there is still a lot of useful data to be mined from your website. It’s just a little harder to find and you’ll need to get comfortable creating custom reports.
3. You have to use different reports for everything
One of the handiest features of the Universal Analytics platform was that you could click through the data on reports to hone in on the details.
Let’s take for example traffic to your site. You could start out with a report showing the different types of traffic to your site, and then decide what you really wanted to know was which social network was sending the most visitors.
All you’d have to do is click “social” on the main report and viola! It brings you to a report that breaks down the different social channels.
Sadly this is not the case in GA4 because none of their reports are clickable.
While you can still get the same traffic overview report, if you want to hone in on the channels, you’ll need to go find a separate report to view that information.
4. Get comfortable with custom reports
What’s mind boggling to me is that GA4 doesn’t have a default social media report. The data is still there, you just have to find it, and that means custom reports. {If you want to learn how to do that, I have instructions for you here.}
If you’re a data geek and love to create custom charts, you’ll be in heaven with GA4. You can start reports from scratch and customize everything about how it displays (table, pie chart, line graph, etc.), put different segments in different rows, and pull out various dimensions.
In short, the world is your oyster.
For the rest of us, it’s easier to modify an existing report by clicking the pencil icon in the upper right corner of any report.
That will let you tinker with the components displayed in the original report and bring in the details you really want and exclude the information you don’t need.
Once you do this, make sure to save the report so you can get to it again without having to customize the view each time you log in.
5. GA4 Views are inconsistent
One of the most frustrating things about GA4 is that it seems to give different views to different people.
When I was doing research on how to build reports, what I saw on my dashboard didn’t match what I was seeing on the help articles I found. My assumption was that GA4 was evolving quickly and the how-to articles could not keep up.
Then I started building dashboards for my clients and I saw differences between the options on their accounts in the exact same report.
It’s little variations like some accounts have the option to see “Views by page title” while others have the option to see “Users by page title.” While it’s similar data, it’s not quite the same.
What’s super annoying is that even if you go searching for a particular piece of information, let’s say “views by page title,” they don’t give it to you, and seem to indicate it doesn’t exist.
Sadly, I don’t have a solution for you on the inconsistent experience. Just know that you’re not totally crazy or doing things wrong if you can’t replicate someone else’s instructions.
6. Where to find your custom reports
When I was learning GA4, I probably built the same report three or four times because I couldn’t find where the heck it was stored. While it’s not exactly hidden, it’s easy to overlook.
To get to your save reports you must first click on Reports in the left menu, and then find the link for Library in the lower left corner.
Once you’re in the Library, scroll down the page to find the Reports section, which will give you a list of the reports you’ve already built.
Overall GA4 does have mountains of data to work with, and is very customizable. It’s also incredibly frustrating, time-consuming, and not at all user-friendly.
If you want to take the time to learn how to use GA4, pop your email in the box below and I’ll send you some instructions on building reports.
On the other hand, if you want to save your sanity, reach out. We can help figure out what data is most important to you and set up custom reports for you.
