Check Out This Sample GA4 Reports Snapshot for Small Business

Now that we have hit all the highlights of Google’s latest incarnation of Analytics, let’s boil it down to create a basic report template for small business use.

Way back in January, we posed some common questions business owners ask about their website’s performance. If you are like most small biz folk, you don’t have a marketing team or a sales division to study the vast amounts of data reported in GA4, nor do you have the time to dig into it yourself. This information, however, is important for making your marketing and sales decisions, so it’s worth setting up a streamlined Reports Snapshot for at-a-glance referring. 

Start by logging into your GA4 account and clicking on the Reports icon to see the Reports Snapshot. On the far right, click on the pencil icon to Customize Report. Now you can choose reports to match the questions you have about how your website is doing.

Simplify. Simplify. Simplify.
You can have up to 16 Summary Cards in your report, but you certainly don’t need to have that many. Go ahead and remove any Card that is not of importance to your business by clicking on the X in the Customize Report column.  For instance, if you never sell product on your website, you don’t need the “Items purchased by Item name” report. Reports with little or no data might indicate how useful that report is to you, but consider keeping a report that measures data you plan to improve even if it’s empty now.

Count your website users.
Two common questions business owners have are “How many users come to our website?” and “Is that number growing?” The first graph in Reports Snapshot, the Overview, shows you New Users and All Users over the past 28 days, plus Average Engagement Time. Keep this report.

Learn where Users come from.
You might want to add three reports to learn more about your website visitors. New Users by… is the first one. The ellipsis means that you have a choice of dimension. Our preference is “First User Source / Medium.” To change Dimensions and Metrics, use the Back button to close Customize Report. Click on View User Acquisition and the pencil there to Customize Report. 

Users by Country is another report to keep in your Overview, but if local search is important to your business, change the dimension to Users by Region or Users by City. Change the dimension by clicking the pencil on the View Countries report. 

The third report comes from Google Search Console, if you have added that to your GA4 account. https://sprocketwebsites.com/Blog/see-better-ga4-reports-when-you-link-your-google-search-console-to-include-search-data The Organic Google Search Impressions by Landing Page lists the pages Users landed on when they clicked on something that interested them while searching online. 

Find out which pages Users like the most.
See what pages people looked at over the last 28 days and how many people are looking with the Views by Page Title. 

Next, see how engaged Users are with those pages.
You can see the average time spent on each page in the Views by Page Title, but there is also a nice graph for the User Engagement report. The graph reports activity over the last 42 days and the Average Engagement Time on each day. 

Check if Users accepting your Call To Action.
Check that your website visitors follow the customer journey you intend them to take through the Summary Card called Event Count by Event Name where you can see if they are scrolling your content, clicking on more pages, or filling out forms. The Key Events by Event Name specifically calls out Users who accept your CTA.

This series of Summary Cards should provide you with the most important information for quick viewing in the Reports Snapshot. You can always add more cards, up to the 16-card limit, if they apply to your objectives. You can also rearrange the cards in the Snapshot into an order that makes sense to you. Remember to save your changes!

Once your Reports Snapshot is set up to your satisfaction, put a tickler on your calendar to look over your Snapshot monthly. The goal is to do more of what’s working, stop doing what’s not working, and act sooner rather than later. 

GA4 for your business website is great, but it’s not the only tool for making the most of your online presence. Learn other ways the Sprocket team can boost your business by giving us a call today!

Photo by Timur Saglambilek

Kate GingoldKate Gingold

I have been writing a blog with web marketing tips and techniques every other week since 2003. In addition to blogging and client content writing, I write books and a blog on local history.

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I have been writing a blog with web marketing tips and techniques every other week since 2003. In addition to blogging and client content writing, I write books and a blog on local history.

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