At Cornershop Creative, we connect the websites that we create to the leading analytics tool, Google Analytics 4 (GA4). GA4 allows you to view your website’s results, optimizing your content and strategies based on what you find.
If you’re feeling overwhelmed or lost after logging into GA4, you’re not alone. There is a wealth of data available within the platform, but not everything is simple to find or even accessible out of the box.
However, there is a lot available within out-of-the-box reports that can be easily accessed and referenced. This is a great place to start as you get to know GA4, your website data, and what’s possible.
Top 3 Reports
These three reports will give you a nice overview of your website’s results, including where visitors are coming from, which pages are most popular, and what users are doing on your website.
Traffic Acquisition
The Traffic acquisition report shows you the breakdown of channels that your traffic is coming from, including organic search, paid search, direct, referral, organic social, email, and more.
From the GA4 menu on the left-hand side of your screen, go to Reports > Acquisition > Traffic acquisition or search for Traffic acquisition in the Reports Library to view the report.
In the report, you’ll find engagement metrics for each channel that show you where your most engaged visitors come from, as well as the channels needing improvement that don’t engage as heavily with the content on your website.
There are a few settings that you might adjust within the report to gather more helpful data:
Update the date range in the top right corner of the screen to the time period you are interested in reviewing
In the table, update the “Rows per page” setting to ensure all rows appear on the first page
The table defaults to showing the “Default Channel Group” for a session, but other options are available through the dropdown menu in the first column of the table, including Session source / medium and session campaign
Pages and Screens
The Pages and screens report shows you engagement metrics by page, revealing the most popular pages on your website in the process.
From the GA4 menu on the left-hand side of your screen, go to Reports > Engagement > Pages and screens or search for Pages and screens in the Reports Library to view the report.
There are a few settings that you might adjust within the report to gather more helpful data:
Update the date range in the top right corner of the screen to the time period you are interested in reviewing
In the table, update the “Rows per page” setting to see more than the top 10 pages in terms of views
In the table, use the search bar to find results on a specific page, rather than scanning the long list of every page on your website to find what you’re looking for
The table defaults to showing the “Page path and screen class”, but other options are available through the dropdown menu in the first column of the table, including Page title and screen class
Events
The Events report shows you the actions (those tracked by Google) that visitors took once they landed on your website. The events listed include the out-of-the-box GA4 events, as well as any custom events that are tracked through your account.
From the GA4 menu on the left-hand side of your screen, go to Reports > Engagement > Events or search for Events in the Reports Library to view the report.
There are a few settings that you might adjust within the report to gather more helpful data:
Update the date range in the top right corner of the screen to the time period you are interested in reviewing
In the table, update the “Rows per page” setting to see more than the top 10 events in terms of event counts
In the table, use the search bar to find results on a specific event, rather than scanning a potentially long list to find what you’re looking for
Filter Reports
To delve further into results on a specific audience, you can add a filter to any report. For example, to view popular pages for visitors from organic search, you could filter the Pages and screens report by the Organic Search channel grouping.
Follow these steps to filter a report:
In the top left corner of the report, click “Add filter.” This will open up the Build filter settings on the right side of the screen.
Select a dimension to filter the report by. For example, to filter for organic search traffic, you’d select “Session default channel group”.
Select the match type. For example, “exactly matches” to pull only data that matches your parameters exactly or “contains” for a more flexible filter.
Enter the value. In our example, you’d enter “Organic Search”.
Click “Apply”.
Filtering reports by elements like the default channel grouping, landing page, and event allows you to zero in on results from specific audiences to better understand and optimize your website for those audiences.
GA4 Trainings
To get further acquainted with GA4, we’d recommend working through online courses to learn how GA4 collects and organizes data and how you can use that knowledge to find the analytics answers that you’re looking for within the platform.
Google provides a range of free online trainings for GA4 through Skillshop, including Get started using Google Analytics.
Custom GA4 Setup
If after reviewing the pre-made reports in GA4, using filters, and working through courses, you are still not finding answers to your analytics questions, it’s likely you need a more custom set-up to fit your needs.
This can include things like custom event set-up to see donation events and revenue data in your GA4 account. Or an exploration report showing common user paths for specific audiences to your website.
Whatever your analytics needs, talk about a custom setup with your project manager or reach out to us through our contact form.