As you may already know, the free version of Universal Analytics (UA) is ceasing to work from July 1st 2023. This means that the data, and how to access them, will change dramatically from that date onwards.
Google’s new analytics tool is Google Analytics 4 (GA4) and whilst lots of the insights and data that you need are there, they can be in a different place and difficult to find / understand.
In this latest blog from the experts at Reporting Ninja we’ll show you how to find the data and reports you are used to in UA, in GA4. Read on to discover everything you need to know.
Default Channel Overview
The default channel overview in UA was a really useful report that showed you traffic, leads and basic engagement metrics that came from specific channels including:
- Organic Search
- Social
- Paid Search
You could access this report by clicking on:
Acquisition > All Traffic > Channels
This report also exists in GA4 and can be viewed following:
Reports > Traffic > Traffic Acquisition
This report shows all the data you had in the UA version - but as with other changes in GA4 there are new metrics including engagement rate (different from bounce rate), engaged sessions and event count.
All Pages Report
If you wanted to view data that covered all pages to give you a broader view of metrics and success, the All Pages Report in UA was your go to report. This gave you an understanding of each page’s performance against a set of metrics including:
- Average Time on Page
- Bounce Rate
- %Exit
- Page Value
- The All Pages Report can be accessed in UA this way:
Behavior > Site Content > All Pages
Fear not, this hasn’t disappeared in GA4, it is just labeled differently.
You can access this information by clicking:
Reports > Engagement > Pages And Screens
It is called Pages And Screens because it is also able to track apps. Although, due to the customization features that exist within GA4, you could rename this too All Pages to reflect the UA version.
Within this Pages and Screens reports you’ll be able to see stats such as:
- Views
- Views per User
- Average Engagement Time
- Event Count
If you click on the drop you can change the primary dimension from Page title and Screen class to page path or even content group if you have set it up.
Landing Page Report
The Landing Page report is another report within Universal Analytics that was often used. The Landing page report shows the first page that visitors landed on when they visited a website. It included valuable metrics including:
- Sessions and Users
- Bounce Rate
- Average Session duration
And most importantly, it showed leads and conversions that occurred from that landing page.
This was accessed by clicking on:
Behavior > Site Content > Landing Pages
For a while, you had to create your own landing page report in GA4, but recently Google introduced the Landing Page data as a standard report within the interface. This can now be found:
Reports > Engagement > Landing Page
Here you can find information about the landing page and important metrics including average engagement time per session, conversions and total revenue. If you find you need more information, you can always customize the report the include metrics that aren’t added by default.
Source / Medium Report
If you want to track campaign performance then the Source / Medium report. The Source / Medium report gives you an idea of which channels and particular campaigns are driving traffic, and crucially which ones are producing results (or not). This comes with data including:
- Bounce Rate
- Conversion Rate
- Sessions
- Users
- New Users
This is absolutely a useful report when looking to build an SEO report.
This report is a little harder to find in GA4 - but it is there.
If you go to your traffic acquisition report that we talked about above:
Reports > Acquisition > Traffic Acquisition
You’ll see that there are several options available via a drop down menu when clicking on the primary dimension. One of these options is source / medium.
This way you can access a source / medium report with a few clicks. However, if you wanted to have this report more readily available you could choose to change the default dimension in the customize report section. Alternatively, you could easily customize the report and save it as a new report, adding it to your library. This way you can access it with a few clicks.
As with the default channel report, the standard metrics you can access from the dashboard include:
- Users
- Sessions
- Engaged Sessions
- Engagement Rate
- Conversions
Referral
Understanding referral data, and the insights you can derive from them mean that referral reports are important.
In UA, the referral data could be viewed by clicking through:
Acquisition > All Traffic > Referrals
This provides insight into sites that send referral traffic to your website. The report comes complete with acquisition, behavior and conversion metrics.
As with the Source / Medium report, there isn’t an easily accessible version in GA4, but with a few clicks and amends, you can get the insight that you neeed.
There are several ways to gather this information.
Option 1:
Go to Reports > Acquisition > Traffic Acquisition and scroll down to the table. From there, enter ‘Referral’ into the search box.
If you then click the ‘+’ sign at the top of the first column next to the drop down menu and click traffic source. This will then open a list of options. From this select ‘Session Source’.
This will then provide you with a list of referral traffic and the sites that the traffic came from.
Creating custom reports and adding them to library
We’ve spoken a great deal about creating custom reports so we think it’s important to show you how to do this.
If you are in a standard report, you can click the ‘customize report’ button at the top right of the report. From there the Customize Report menu opens up allowing you to:
- Add or remove dimensions
- Include or exclude metrics
- Remove charts
- Utilize a report filter
From there if you click ‘Save’ and ‘Save as New Report’. Name it something simple and reflective of the report.
Once back into the main reports section, if you click on the Library button at the bottom left, you can then choose to edit a collection. Finding your new report, drag and drop it into the preferred selection and click save. Et voila, you have now added a customized report to your main reports meaning your data is more accessible.
GA4 is a new and exciting analytics tool. And getting to grips with it and understanding how best to extract insights will become more and more vital as UA is sunset from 1st July 2023.
Understanding your website traffic and what it’s doing is vitally important these days to ensure that you are maximizing every opportunity possible. By using Reporting Ninja’s analytics reporting tool, you can bring all your data together in an easily digestible way.
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