1.3 Get to Know Google Analytics 4 Properties Flashcards
In this module, you’ll learn:
- What’s new with Reports and Explorations
- How to navigate the Reports interface
- About some of the different Exploration techniques
- How to find what you need with the search tool
Reports and Explorations are…
…complementary areas in the latest Google Analytics experience. They’re designed to provide actionable insights into your website and app data, so you can explore data and insights at the level you need, from technical analysis to high-level reporting.
Note
In the latest Google Analytics experience, both Reports and Explorations use machine learning to make your data more meaningful, accessible, and actionable.
Answer key questions with reporting in GA4 properties
In GA4 properties, reporting is simplified. Instead of a very long list of predefined reports that try to cover every use case, a handful of overview reports each cover a single insight about your business in a summary card, like “What are your user demographics?”
If you want to go deeper, you can drill into a more comprehensive report by selecting the link at the bottom of each summary card. This experience gives you more flexibility and can provide you with deeper insights.
Explore your data in GA4 properties
If you’re looking for insights that the reports don’t cover, the Explore section gives you more customizable ways to analyze your data. With Explorations, you can drag and drop the dimensions and metrics you’re interested in. You can also quickly and easily filter, segment, sort, and refactor your data to home in on the insights you care about.
Once you’ve discovered interesting data sets, you can export them as Google Analytics segments or audiences. You can share your analyses with stakeholders throughout your organization and beyond. You can also export the data for use in other tools.
With Analysis…
…you can drag and drop the dimensions and metrics you’re interested in. You can also filter, segment, sort, and refactor your data to home in on the insights you care about.
You’ll find many different reports listed on the left side of the Analytics interface…
These reports can show you information about your users, like how they found your business and how they’re engaging with it. Each report shows a high-level snapshot of these insights using summary cards.
If you want to go deeper into a particular topic, you can explore a more comprehensive report by selecting the link at the bottom of each summary card.
With the Realtime report…
you can monitor activity as it happens. This report shows you events that took place between five seconds and 30 minutes ago.
The card-based layout is designed to quickly answer important questions about how your users are currently interacting with your business. Each card represents a stage in the marketing funnel. In this report you can:
See different segments of users side by side to compare how they’re performing in real time
Easily create a new segment that you can also use in other reports
Looking to go deeper? Explorations let you easily configure and switch between a number of powerful techniques to better understand your data. These techniques include:
- Free form exploration
- Funnel exploration
- Path exploration
- Segment overlap
- User exploration
- Cohort exploration
Free form exploration
The free form exploration allows you to visualize your data with flexibility and ease. To conduct an ad hoc analysis, just drag and drop the variables you’re interested in onto a canvas to see instant visualizations of your data. Don’t see the variable you’re looking for? Select the plus icon to view the full list of dimensions and metrics you can use.
This tool presents your data in a cross-tab layout, where you can arrange the rows and columns as you like and add the metrics you’re most interested in. You can also apply different visualization styles, including bar charts, pie charts, line charts, scatter plots, and maps.
If you spot a significant data point, right-click on that data point to easily create an audience or segment from it and use it in other explorations. If you use the line chart visualization, you’ll see an automatic feature enabled called anomaly detection. This feature uses machine learning to identify outliers in your data according to your parameters.
Funnel exploration
Funnel exploration lets you visualize the steps your users take toward a key task or conversion. This tool helps you identify sequences of key events and understand how your users navigate these steps. You’ll be able to see where users enter your funnels, as well as where they drop off.
You can use this information to improve your site or app and reduce inefficient or abandoned customer journeys. You can also easily create audiences of users based on where they enter or exit the funnels you define.
With this tool, you can define up to 10 steps in your funnels, up from five steps in UA properties’ Custom Funnels. Plus, you can now analyze both closed funnels (where users must enter at the beginning of the funnel) and open funnels (where users can enter the funnel at any point).
Path exploration
Path exploration lets you understand how people progress from one stage in the customer journey to the next.
Like funnel exploration, path exploration uncovers the steps users take through your site or app. But while funnels only analyze a single, predefined path, path exploration is free-flowing and can follow any number of undefined paths, even ones you weren’t aware of or didn’t intend. For example, it could uncover looping behavior, which may indicate users becoming stuck.
Plus, you can define paths using either a starting point or an ending point. This helps you understand how users got to a certain step on their journey and shows you what they did after.
Segment overlap
Segment overlap lets you compare up to three user segments to quickly see how those segments overlap and relate to each other. This can help you isolate specific audiences based on complex conditions. You can then create new segments based on your findings, which you can apply to other exploration techniques and Google Analytics reports.
User exploration
User exploration lets you select specific groups of users, like people who both visited your website and downloaded your app, and learn more about each anonymous individual user’s activities. Understanding individual behavior is important when you want to personalize the user experience or when you need to gain insight into unexpected user behaviors.
Cohort exploration
A cohort is a group of users who share a common characteristic identified in this report by a specific event the user has triggered. For example, all users who signed up this week for your newsletter belong to the same cohort. Cohort exploration allows you to explore the behavior of these groups over time on your app or website.
