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Group the Cards Most Important to Your Business in Collections for GA4 Reports
The Sprocket Report
As we’ve said many times, the latest incarnation of Google Analytics is endlessly configurable, so it’s helpful to group the cards you prefer to see into Collections for easy viewing.
People do a lot of business online, and even though what they may be doing is way different from what you do, they are just as interested in analytics for measuring success as you are. As an example, someone who develops apps or who builds online gaming systems requires measuring unique data that wouldn’t interest an accountant or a pizza parlor.
So while there is an App Developer collection and a Games Reporting collection, most of our clients focus on the Life Cycle collection and the User collection, both of which are, fortunately, predefined and available in the left-side navigation column by default.
The difference between the Life Cycle collection and the User collection is that the data in Life Cycle helps you understand how people are using your website while the User collection provides you with information about those people using your website.
The reports available to you in the Life Cycle collection include Acquisition, Engagement, Monetization, and Retention. All of these follow your customer’s journey through your website. By studying these reports, you can learn how customers are using your website now so you can make improvements to their journey for greater success.
The User collection gives you information such as what countries your users come from, whether they use desktop computers or mobile devices, and similar statistics. As privacy laws wax and wane, how much information you can actually collect about your User will no doubt evolve.
Next time, we’ll look more closely at the Life Cycle collection because this is proably where your team will want to concentrate. One word of warning first, however, Google is constantly tweaking how GA4 works, so if you’re reading this and it looks different on your dashboard, it may be that a change just happened and we haven’t updated this article yet. Just recently, we logged into a client’s GA4 dashboard and found this announcement:
Analytics conversions have been renamed key events
To distinguish conversions in Google Analytics from those in Google Ads, Analytics conversions are now called key events.
That means we already need to update 2024’s Sprocket Report articles and we’re only three months into the year! It’s a lot to keep track of when you’re also trying to run the day-to-day operations of your business. Make it simpler by working with our SEO and marketing team. Give us a call today to see how we can work together.
Photo by Kindel Media
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Kate 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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