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“Don’t obsess over sub metrics, but obsess over the key metrics that tie into your revenue growth. Measure them all and magical things will happen.” - Jason Lemkin, Founder SaaStr.
Google Analytics 4 is a tool that has revolutionized the process of tracking user behavior data. The GA4 metrics provide amazing user insights, that is every marketer’s delight. With these insights, you can monitor your website performance and provide a better user experience.
With the transformation of Universal Analytics to GA4, you need to be aware of the key GA4 metrics that are helpful for your online presence. Through this blog you will get a deeper understanding of the key GA4 metrics.
As you read on, you will understand why you should migrate to GA4 and how it is different from UA. You will also learn the difference between GA4 metrics and dimensions and what are the metrics categories. Let us dive in!
Google Analytics (GA) is a tool that helps you in tracking traffic and engagement that happens on your website. It is a popular and free service that is used by more than 75 million websites.
The previous versions of Google Analytics (GA1, GA2, GA3) are called Universal Analytics (UA). The fourth and latest version of Google Analytics is termed GA4. Introduced in October 2020, GA4 will be the only option to process data from 1st July 2023.
Google Analytics 4 is a futuristic property that has revolutionized analytics. With an aim to enhance user engagement with various GA4 metrics, it has become an important and beneficial tool.
Along with the ever-evolving users, the tools to gain insight into user engagement also keep evolving. GA4 is a tool that has been devised with customer privacy in mind. It complies with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) privacy law.
GA 4 metrics and dimensions (context of your data) collect data from the website and app to enable a better user journey. It tracks the behavior of the user who visits the website from a mobile phone but comes back on a desktop.
The new predictive GA4 metrics help to create your audience depending on predictive behavior. With this data, you can target the relevant audience and improve your website performance.
The GA4 metrics are nothing but beneficial and migrating to GA4 will only help in getting better user insight. Besides, from 1st July 2023, Universal Analytics will stop processing your data and only Google Analytics 4 will reign.
Related: Get ahead of the curve and migrate to GA4 today. Check out our blog for insights into why you should make the move now.
While Universal Analytics used the session-pageviews-based measurement model, Google Analytics 4 uses the event-parameter-based measurement model. GA4 helps you to track any of the user activities as events and also allows you to create custom events.
GA4 model is more flexible and enables accurate reporting across websites and apps. It tracks a broader range of user interaction that is not restricted to a session. You can process 25 event parameters, way more than the 4 from Universal Analytics.
Google Analytics 4 gets an upper hand in the GA4 vs Universal Analytics debate. The shortcoming of Universal Analytics is that you can only track on the website, while GA4 allows you to track on the website as well as the app.
To use GA4 efficiently, it is important to be familiar with the difference between GA4 metrics and GA4 dimensions. Let us understand them in detail.
Google Analytics 4 was designed as a tool that works most efficiently for marketers and the metrics are its main pillars. To date, there are a total of 109 GA4 metrics. If you want to track data that is not captured by these GA4 metrics, you can generate your own custom metrics.
Unlike the established GA4 metrics, you can create custom metrics based on the type of your business. It will assist you to track data that is unique to your business.
The 109 GA4 metrics are spread across ten categories to easily understand what you are trying to measure. These ten categories are as follows:
With a staggering number of GA4 metrics, it can be overwhelming to keep a track of all of them. Don’t drown yourself in all of the metrics. Here is a list of the key GA4 metrics that every marketer should track to get a better insight into the users.
In GA4, the users metric shows the total number of unique users that engaged with your website or app. Understanding this metric provides you with insight into how the users are interacting with your website.
When a unique user visits your website, Google tags the user with an ID. This ensures that the unique user is counted only once even if they return to your website from a different device.
It helps understand the accurate performance of your website. It shows whether your content is engaging users if they return to your website. It is an important metric as it displays the growth of your website.
The New users metric in GA4 is the total number of users who are visiting your website or app for the first time. When Google tags the unique user with an ID, an accurate number of new users is provided, differentiating from the returning users.
With the total number of new users, you can understand whether your content is compelling enough to attract new users and how they behave when they visit your website.
To learn more about all SaaS Metrics in one place, check out our Metricbase page.
A session is a period during which a user was engaged on your website or app. This GA4 metric displays the total number of sessions that started on your website or app.
In UA, a new session was initiated for the same user if it was midnight. But in GA4 the same session continues for the next day, without starting a new one. This gives an accurate number of visitors landing on your webpage.
Unlike UA, if the same user visits your webpage from another traffic source, GA does not initiate a new session but considers it as part of the same session. This is a major GA4 metric as it assists you in measuring the traffic created by your website.
Google defines the engaged sessions per user metric as, “The average number of engaged sessions per user.” It can be calculated using the below formula:
A higher value shows that the website has more engaged users. This is a key GA4 metric for marketers as it reveals the number of people who use your website per visit.
In GA4, average session duration is a metric that measures the average time of users’ sessions spent on your website. It can be calculated with this formula:
By tracking the data provided by this key metric, you can understand the average time users are spending on your website content.
The sessions conversion rate metric provides the percentage of sessions that are converted. It compares the users who visit your website with the users who turn to purchasing customers.
This key GA4 metric helps you understand user behavior on the website and what are the barriers to converting. It also assists you in determining which of your website pages are generating higher conversions.
Views is another key GA4 metric. It displays the total number of times users viewed your webpage or app screens. Unlike UA, GA4 shows the views from the webpage as well as the app, so the view count might be higher than what you got in UA.
However, this metric has a downside. It does not count unique views. Repeated views from the same user are counted as new views. For example, if a user views your webpage or app screen 20 times, the metric will count it as 20 views.
It is still an important metric as it shows your website performance and how the website tweaks are affecting user behavior. It is a helpful metric for planning your SEO strategies.
In GA4, views per user is a metric that identifies the average number of times a particular page or app screen was viewed by a single user. This helps to understand which content on your website is most compelling to a user.
This key metric provides beneficial insights that are valuable in determining user engagement, website performance, and conversion rate.
It shows that some users find valuable content and keep returning to your page. If they are not converting, they might be facing some conversion barriers. You can make the required improvements so the users are easily led to converting.
Views per session is a key GA4 metric that measures the number of pages or app screens that your users viewed during a single session.
This metric helps you in identifying the pages or screens with the most views during a session. With this data, you can focus on improvements of these pages or screens that will lead to conversion.
Conversions is one of the most essential GA4 metrics as it throws a light on the performance of your business. This metric tracks any user action on your website that is important for your business.
UA defines conversions as goals. But in GA4, conversions are triggered by the actions that you have specified as conversion events. For example, a user buying from your website is a common conversion.
UA includes just one conversion per session based on each goal, but GA4 includes every instance even though the conversion event might keep repeating in a single session.
This key GA4 metric provides you with insights into user behavior. It helps you understand your users' demonstrated trends and the effect of your ad campaigns on the users.
In the event count metric, all the user actions are regarded as events. This GA4 metric identifies the total number of times that an event took place.
It provides you with an insight into the user journey. With the data from this key metric, you can devise your marketing strategies based on the user behavior on your website or app.
UA had a bounce rate which calculated the number of users who visited your website but left without viewing other pages. Engagement rate is a new GA4 metric that has replaced the bounce rate of UA.
This metric measures the percentage of users who were engaged on your website or app. It is an important tool to measure user engagement with your website. The formula to calculate the engagement rate is:
Engaged sessions are sessions that last longer than ten seconds, result in a conversion event, and result in at least two or more page/screen views.
This key GA4 metric is more useful than the bounce rate in UA. It provides more information about the interaction instead of users who just exit your website. It guides you on whether your website content is at par with the expectations of your users.
Related: Unlock insights on engagement metrics like Engagement Rate in Google Analytics 4. Learn more more about this metric.
Average engagement time is a GA4 metric that displays the average time that a user was focused on your website. It is a valuable metric as it throws light on the user journey on your website. It can be calculated using this formula:
The average time can vary as per your business. This GA4 metric will help you understand the performance of your website and whether it requires any improvements.
Lifetime value (LTV) is a GA4 metric that tells you if the users are valuable to your business depending on their lifetime performance. Analysing this metric will help you to determine the methods that will fetch you high-level users.
This is a key metric as it also provides a hint of how much amount you can invest to acquire a new customer.
Data visualization tools like Dataflo presents a dynamic solution to the challenge of analyzing and comprehending GA4 metrics.
With Dataflo, one can visualize GA4 data in real-time, leading to clear and comprehensible visualizations that quickly identify underlying patterns and trends in data.
Dataflo’s custom dashboard empowers marketers to gain actionable insights by seamlessly visualizing and criss-analyzing GA4 metrics alongside Google Search Console metrics and CRM metrics from Salesforce, Hubspot CRM, Pipedrive CRM and Zoho CRM.
This makes marketers' lives simple in understanding the lead pipeline and the channels that work well for them.
By Booking a demo with Dataflo today, paid marketers can accurately track and measure the entire customer journey from website visitors to deals won and revenue generated, ensuring that their marketing efforts are delivering the best possible results.
Overall, Dataflo's innovative functionality creates a conduit for sense-making of GA4 metrics by transforming raw data into practical insights that spearhead business growth and accomplishment.
Thus, its unparalleled proficiency in analysis and visualization avails cutting-edge tools to optimize data and achieve desired outcomes.
The Google Analytics 4 metrics are a helping hand for all marketers as its usage will assist them a great deal in strategizing their marketing tactics. Using GA4, it is possible to measure almost anything and even custom metrics.
UA will soon stop processing data, so you must migrate to GA4. It is crucial that you learn how GA4 stands out from UA and get familiar with the difference between GA4 metrics and dimensions to efficiently use GA4.
Understanding which are the most important metrics is the first step to growing your business. The key metrics will provide brilliant user insights. These insights will help you in improving your online presence. So study this guide and start tracking the key GA4 metrics.
Suvedha loves creating compelling and effective content by using data to inform the content strategy and writing process. She began writing as a way of expressing her ideas and soon the act of writing became cathartic for her. Now this impulse has turned into a full-blown career. Apart from writing, she likes to haunt local bookstores and make impromptu plans with friends and then questioning this decision.
