## Google Analytics 4 Essential Training
🔹 *parent* [[Google Analytics]]
▫️ *related* [[Google Tag Manager]], [[Advanced Google Analytics 4]]
Certificate: [CertificateOfCompletion_Google Analytics 4 GA4 Essential Training.pdf (74.1 kB)](http://localhost:9425/files/ea57605a-9021-4915-a891-d7da0c0579bd.pdf)
### Overview
> Google Analytics is the de facto standard for web analytics and provides the means to track, analyze, and report on site visits, marketing goals, and ad revenue generated from your site. This course explains how to use Google Analytics to measure traffic, conversions, ad performance and ROI, and to identify how people use your website. Google product expert Corey Koberg covers the out-of-the-box functionality, from account creation to reporting fundamentals, and explains how to glean insights from the vast array of data available—from averages and segments to trends and context. If you want to learn how to get, convert, and retain customers, manage user accounts, and more, join Corey in this course.
### Resources
[Campaign URL Builder](https://ga-dev-tools.google/ga4/campaign-url-builder/ "https://ga-dev-tools.google/ga4/campaign-url-builder/")
### Digital Analytics and Key Concepts
Measuring Business goals, finding areas for improvement, taking actions
Metrics and Dimensions
- Metrics: quantitative, measure data, counts/ratios/percentages
- Dimensions: Qualitative, describe, split data into categories
**Event** - Any interaction - clicks, scrolls, product views, page views
### GA4 vs Universal
Features
- Event Driven
- Automatic tracking and enhanced measurement
- Cross-device tracking - knows when it’s 1 person on 2 devices
- Sessions more robust
- Vastly improved funnels and pathing
- Time-based analysis
- Additional and more flexible conversion goals
- Advanced users can export all data to the cloud via BigQuery
Features missing? These are missing or incomplete.
- Views aren’t coming back, but there are alternatives
- Some features are yet to come
- Attribution
- Multichannel funnels
- stream-level user permissions and filters (Views)
- Page and site load time tools - not yet included
- Integration with the full GMP tool suite
### Google Analytics Fundamentals
Google account - Top level
> GA4 account - Company, Personal, Brand
> Property - Website, App/Web, Mobile, My Site
> Stream - data sources
#### When to track campaigns
Generally, you want to track when you’re running a campaign.
| | |
|---|---|
|**Automatic Detection**|**Manual tagging Required**|
|- Referral links<br>- Organic search<br>- Direct visits|- Social campaigns<br>- Emails<br>- Display Ads<br>- Everything else|
#### Track campaigns using UTMs
There is a special tool for this: [Campaign URL Builder](https://ga-dev-tools.google/ga4/campaign-url-builder/ "https://ga-dev-tools.google/ga4/campaign-url-builder/")
- URL
- source (i.e., twitter)
- Medium (i.e., social)
- Campaign name
### Intro to the User Interface and Reports
#### Home Screen and UI Nav
Reports Snapshot in the top left will show you an overall view of your account.
- This can be configured in ‘Library’ (bottom left)
Life Cycle track the customer journey - Acquisition, Engagement, Monetization
- User acquisition will be more accurate because it will show multiple devices per user
Insights section - machine learning tools
- Looks for spikes
- You can filter by
- Demographics
- User Acquisition
- Traffic Analysis
Realtime - shows you were users are currently
- View User Session - gives you random events of current user (top right)
### Filtering and Segmenting Data
#### Segmentation via comparisons
Home > Add comparison (top middle) > Build comparison > Conditions
- Add information about the users you want to compare.
For instance `Country: include US` vs `Country: exclude US`
Once created, you can go to `Life Cycle > Acquisition` and it will now break out these two groups in the various graphics to help you see differences.
#### Traffic acquisition: Session Medium
`Life Cycle > Traffic Acquisition`
- Can tell you information on the different versions that are being used.
`Tech > Tech Details`
- Use this to find out what version of an app users are using.
- Sort by country to figure out what countries are using Android or iOS, and you can also search for those devices to see specific results.
#### Audiences
`Configure > Audiences > Create New Audience`
1. Name the audience - Engaged users, nonconverter outside the US.
2. Include **Users** when:
- **session_start**, AND LTV (lifetime value) == 0,
- **event_count**, Condition: > 3, no time period (off)
3. Permanently exclude Users when:
- **Country ID** contains **US** > -[x] At any point
Once saved, go back to the Audience home,
- Find the custom audience “Engaged users...”
- Click the Options dots on the right side, select “Apply to Dashboard”
- The Dashboard will now _only_ show results for that custom audience.
### Lifecycle Reports
#### Analyzing how to get customers
Left column > Acquisition > Acquisition overview
Dashboard that shows:
- Overall
- New
- Who came here in the last 30 min?
User Acquisition
- In the first column, select **First user source / medium** to list domain/type of referral
- Referral is someone linking to your content - where are they linking to?
- Set second column to **page_location**
- Sort final column by **Total revenue** Descending (highest to lowest)
Traffic Acquisition is another way to look at traffic data.
#### Engagement reports: Overview, pages, and screens
Left column > Engagement > Overview
- Overall view of engagement
Engagement > Pages and Screens
- Shows you a table of data about individual pages.
- Keep the title, but add (+) > Custom (event-scoped) > page_location - helps relate Pages to the URL, if there are similar page Titles (”Shopping Cart”)
- Sort by **Unique user scrolls** column
#### Engagement Reports: Events
There are built in Events, but you can also create your own.
`Engagement > Events`
- Lists active events. Each can be clicked (or searched) for more information on how it’s being triggered.
- By using this, you can create events that show you exactly where a user did something different. For example, a level where most users quit in a game.
#### Analyzing how to convert customers
In Monetization > Overview, you can find out:
- Average cost of ads
- Items being viewed
- Promotion names that got attention
- Revenue by coupon
- Revenue by product ID
- Revenue by Ad unit
Monetization > Ecommerce purchases
- Shows ecommerce data
- Sort by **Purchase-to-view rate** - top will show items not viewed often but purchased a lot when it was.
#### Analyzing how to keep customers
Depending strategy, you may want to focus on retaining customers vs getting new customers.
- Or Business travelers vs Holiday travelers
`Retention > Overview `
OR
`Analysis > Template gallery > Cohort analysis`
- Gives a lot of customizable settings to compare groups of people.
- To get User Engagement, change the Variables for **Metrics > Active Users** and Add (+) **User engagement**
- This adds the option, but then pull that option from the list **Tab Settings > Values**
- Change **Tab Settings > Metric Type** dropdown to **Per cohort user**
### User Reports and Events
#### Demographics and interests reports
This brings in external data to supplement your data - background information.
**Demographics > Overview** shows a dashboard of information.
**Demographics Details** - Set the first column to drill down to specifics (gender, language, age). This can help you get an idea of your main audience.
- **Average Engagement Time** is a good category to sort who is staying on a site the longest.
**Users by Platform** can give you information on cross-device tracking.
**Tech > Overview** can give you information on how your users are typically using your website. You can use this to figure out the best sizes/devices to test.
### Analysis Hub
Explorer tool - previously known as the Analysis Hub
- Includes pre-built templates that you can use.
- Or start blank and add variables and settings.
US Traffic (Sorting Example)
- Metrics: Active Users
- Segments: Templates > Demographics > Country ID: "Contains US"
- Dimensions: Platform/Device > Screen Resolution > Drag into "Rows"
- Filters > Screen Resolution > 1080
#### Pathing Analysis
Rather than looking at the big picture, you might want to try sampling.
Explorer Tool > Tab Settings > Technique > Path Exploration
- This will return information on events: sessions, page view, and exit.
- Limit the options for each node (steps in path)
Reverse - set the Ending Point first in Path Exploration in order to find out where users are coming from.
#### Funnel Visualization Analysis
Previous version was inflexible, but this version is much improved.
- Build funnels how you like
- Don't need to know outcomes first
`Tab Settings > Technique: Funnel Exploration`
- Breakdown - can let you start at a specific place
- Step 1 - "Begin Checkout" - select _begin_checkout_ parameter.
- Step 2 : "Billing & Shipping" - _add_payment_info_ OR _add_shipping_info_
- Step 3: "Review" - _review_order_ parameter
- Step 4: "Purchase" - _purchase_ parameter
Select dimensions > Device Category
- Returns info on each step for certain devices - to see if there is a bug for a device
### Configuration Basics
You can fine tune specific measurements in your Admin settings. This used to be much harder to setup.
Admin > Data Stream > Click specific data stream > Turn on 'Enhanced Measurement'
- Turn on Page views, scrolls, outbound clicks, site search, video engagement, downloads
#### Setting up goals
Helps you figure out goal conversions - buys, form submission, anything related to audience engagement.
You can configure your events to consider specific events as "conversions"
- _first_visit_, _page_view_, _scroll_, _sesson_start_
- Normally don't want to turn these into "conversions", but it can sometimes be useful.
- 'Create event' button will allow you to fine-tune these events
- Create > Name event 'FormSubmitComplete'
- Value _formcomplete_ (type in)
- Events > Conversions > Create New Conversion Event > select 'FormSubmitComplete'
- Note that it can take up to 24 hours to appear
#### Managing User Accounts
**Account User Management -** top level
- Admin > Account User Management > Add Users
- Add email and [x] notify to send them info
- **Edit** is necessary to create an audience
- **Callaborate** checks with Edit, _but can't be unchecked_
- **Read & Analyze -** lets them read the report
- **Manage Users -** add, delete, change user permissions.
- 'Add' to save
**Property permissions -** inherits from **User Management**
- Property settings - You can override property directly
### Next Steps
- Google Tag Manager course - same instructor
- Attribution and Mix Modeling - understand marketing overview
- Google Analytics individual qualification exam
- [https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/3424287?hl=en](https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/34242877hNen)
<hr class="references">
### References
1. Koberg, Corey (2022). _Google Analytics 4 (GA4)_, [LinkedIn Learning](https://www.linkedin.com/learning/google-analytics-4-ga4-essential-training-14915362/why-are-there-two-version-of-this-course?autoSkip=true&contextUrn=urn%3Ali%3AlearningCollection%3A7090093724864507904&resume=false&u=74410692 "https://www.linkedin.com/learning/google-analytics-4-ga4-essential-training-14915362/why-are-there-two-version-of-this-course?autoSkip=true&contextUrn=urn%3Ali%3AlearningCollection%3A7090093724864507904&resume=false&u=74410692")