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When you compare Google Analytics 4 (GA4) reporting navigation to Universal Analytics (UA), you’ll notice a significant difference. The report menu and the look and feel of reports have been updated to work with the new event data model GA4 uses to collect data from your website or mobile app. Here I will provide tips for different components to help you customize your GA4 reporting.
# | Component | Allowance | Permissions |
1 | Reports Snapshot | 1 | edit |
2 | Realtime Report | 1 | - |
3 | Collection | 7 | edit, create, delete |
4 | Collection Topic | 5 per collection | edit, create, delete |
5 | Overview Report | 150 | edit, create, delete |
6 | Detail Report | 200 | edit, create, delete |
7 | Library | 1 | edit, create |
The snapshot report (or Reports snapshot) is an overview that users will see once they click Reports in the GA4 menu. By default, the snapshot report includes metrics outlined in what Google calls “cards”. Cards are created when you create custom detail reports. The real value of customizing the snapshot report is in the strategy behind creating and choosing which cards to include.
As your GA4 property collects data through the Data Streams connected to your website(s) and/or mobile app(s) the Realtime report lets you monitor the activity as it happens. This report can’t be changed but you can add comparisons to it. Like the Snapshot report, this report also has cards providing data such as the count of users in the last 30 minutes and event counts by event name.
Realtime Report Tips:
This is where the real magic happens and how you can begin making GA4 reporting work for you. Here you will find two types of assets called Reports and Collections. Reports will ultimately consist of “cards” that were mentioned earlier and once your reports are created, you will then choose the most appropriate way to categorize them into collections and eventually be displayed in the report menu.
A collection is a set of reports that you and other editors have created. You can create your own collections as well as edit or remove the default collections already provided. The Life cycle and User collections appear in the report navigation by default when a GA4 property is created.
Tips Using Collections:
Custom Reports allow you to start building out the structure of your collections with two types of reports: Overview and Detail Reports.
An overview report is a dashboard that summarizes the detail reports in a topic using cards.
Need to Know:
A detail report can have up to two visualizations and a table.
Need to Know:
The streamlined reporting in GA4 will give end users easy access to curated reports, providing key metrics and conversions they love at their fingertips.
Ready to answer more complex questions with your GA4? Here are additional tools to go further with the GA4 interface and beyond.
GA4 is still developing its feature set but you can protect your data by dual-tagging your site with GA4 alongside Universal Analytics. This will provide historical data for you to begin learning more about the reporting and analysis capabilities within GA4.
To learn more about GA4 and dual tagging, watch our GA4 workshop and webinar. Or contact us directly! And keep an eye on our blog—we’ll share more information about GA4 in the coming months.