How to Use GA4: Google Analytics for Beginners

What is GA4? This digital tool is the newest form of Google Analytics, replacing the previous system known as Universal Analytics, which started to lag behind in areas such as cross-device tracking, privacy and mobile-first operations. This updated analytics tool offers a wealth of new features and technologies to help modern businesses tackle the challenges of digital marketing in the 2020s. However, while the tool’s capacity to guide businesses in facilitating the customer journey with data and machine learning is impressive, knowing how to use GA4 can take some learning for many. 

In this blog, we’re going to give a beginner’s Google Analytics tutorial, so you can approach the tool with the knowledge to understand its core features. 

 

The GA4 Data Model

Knowing how to use GA4 starts with understanding its data model, which has shifted from a hierarchical system to an event-based model. Events are essentially the actions that users take on your website or app, including: 

• Clicking a link
• Filling out a form
• Purchasing something
• Using the shopping cart
• Using a promo code
• Scroll depth
• Video plays (and length)
• App interactions
• And more

 

Events can be interpreted through a variety of customizable parameters, meaning you can track specific user actions with ease. The “flat” event-based model ensures consistency between platforms and devices, making it easier to interpret analytics in the way that suits you.

 

Enhanced ethics

GA4 has enhanced its data collection techniques, enhancing compliance and ethics, while also including features to ensure that analytics are still highly useful. With the new Consent Mode, data collection and tracking adapts dynamically based on user consent, while using machine learning and predictive analytics to fill in any gaps in reporting. Best of all, data collection can be adjusted for specific regions, ensuring compliance with laws like GDPR and CCPA.

 

GA4 reports

GA4 reports – collections of performance insights – are the core of the data that you can use to adjust your strategies. GA4 reports will feature data on elements like: 

• Traffic 
• User activity
• Campaign performance (marketing and product rollout)
• Sales performance
• Purchase journeys
• Individual page performance

 

The reporting model is based around four primary pillars: 

• Reports
• Explore
• Advertising
• Configure

 

Reports

This is the most straightforward reporting section, offering lifecycle overview data, encompassing: 

• Acquisition – the channels that each user has come from
• Engagement – how users are interacting with your content (time, sessions, clicks)
• Monetisation – how your pages & website are generating income
• Retention – how many of your customers are coming back

 

This is likely the easiest and most comprehensive reporting tool in GA4. This tab also offers User Reports and Event Reports, showing insights about specific visitors and events respectively. 

 

Explore

This is a highly customizable tool within the reporting model, offering analytics and visualisations of data. It’s a great tool for focusing on use cases, while also offering pre-formatted templates for different industry specialities. The drag and drop system makes it easy to incorporate filters and conditions, making the reports all the more specific. 

 

Advertising

This reporting section digs deeper into the specifics of ad performance, allowing teams to better understand how their marketing campaigns are working. By focusing on the user journey, marketing teams can streamline their approach. 

 

Configure

This is essentially the pillar focused on making things hyper-specific. Within the Configure tab, users can create custom events, manage custom dimensions and implement super-accurate settings for tailored analytics. 

Knowing how to use GA4 reporting is essential to gathering the necessary information for making educated strategic manoeuvres,

 

Integrating with Google Marketing Platform (GMP)

GMP is full of tools and plaforms that can be used to enhance marketing efforts, which is why it makes sense to integrate GA4 as a sort of base for operations within its infrastructural framework. GMP is a useful platform for enacting campaigns, search ads and video content. GA4 offers data that makes targeting these efforts effectively more straightforward, along with Predictive Audiences – AI that identifies likely purchasers to further focus efforts. 

 

How to set up Google Analytics

If you’re eager to get started in implementing GA4 with your website, the setup process is very similar to Universal Analytics. In short, the process involves: 

• Creating a new Property in your GA4 account
• Adding a data stream for your website or app into that property
• Use a Google Tag Manager to deploy a GA4 tag for tracking
• If still using UA, use GA4 alongside it (dual-tagging) to become familiar with the new system

 

Still confused? Don’t worry

This basic GA4 training only scratches the surface of what the tool is capable of, which can feel very overwhelming for businesspeople at varying levels of technical inclination. We didn’t even get under the hood of Google Analytics SEO analysis or how to measure eCommerce performance – those are articles for another day. 

While utilising data analytics is more essential than ever in the modern economy, not everyone can spend the sort of time necessary to interpret and analyse that data while under the pressures of running their business. That’s why it’s worth considering a collaboration with an agency like Digital Next – a team that understands the ins and outs of digital performance in its many forms, handling the technical side so you can focus on the more core operations of your business.