New Reporting & Navigation in Google Analytics 4 (fka App+Web)

Google Analytics 4 (formerly known as App+Web) finally has a new navigation structure and reports to go along with it! If you’ve missed the more familiar look and feel of reporting in Universal Analytics (like I have!), this will be a very welcome update to GA4 (App+Web) and help you to not only get more familiar with the data you’re seeing (because, well, it will look more familiar), but also help you relate what you know from Universal Analytics to GA 4.

To start, let’s take a look at that left hand navigation. You’ll notice that the navigation now has more expandability, similar to the reporting tree in Universal Analytics.

Previous App+Web navigation:

New GA4 navigation:

If you look closely at the main card on the home screen, you’ll also notice that some of the metrics have changed, to have more of a focus on users and user engagement rather than event count and conversions, which as aggregated metrics, didn’t make a ton of sense, so I think this is a positive direction towards more actionability.

Next, we’ll look at the new “Life Cycle” reports, starting with Acquisition. In this section, you’ll see that there are now 3 separate reports tucked under the expandable menu, “Overview” (which you’ll find in most sections), “User Acquisition”, and “Traffic Acquisition”. 

It’s interesting that GA4 is now showing users and traffic (session level) as two separate reports. While I appreciate being able to analyze them separately, it does feel a bit heavy on cognitive load to have to decide each time you pull a report if you should be looking at users or session based reporting, but it’s nice to have the choice. 

User acquisition:

Note that in all of these detail reports, you can change the primary dimension by clicking the dropdown arrow and choosing which dimension you want to analyze by. In addition, you can also add a secondary dimension by clicking the plus icon to the right of the primary dimension picker. 

Traffic acquisition: 

Next we have the Engagement reports. Here we start with an overview report, which has several cards on it with different charts (similar to the older style of App+Web reporting), and then we have detailed views of Events and Pages/Screens.

Events:

Pages and Screens. This one should feel particularly familiar, as you get a lot of the same detail you would in the “All Pages” report in Universal Analytics. If you often look at this report in UA, you might find yourself here often in GA4 as well. Definitely a welcome addition to reporting!

Ecommerce reporting now lives under a new section called “Monetization” which has 4 reports, 2 specifically for app. First, we start with the “Overview” report, which gives you an overview of how your Ecommerce store is performing:

The “Ecommerce Purchases” report then looks at details of what has been purchased, and allows you to slice and dice with different primary and secondary dimensions in the table:

Next we move into the “Users” section, which has a lot of the same details you would find under the “Audience” section in Universal Analytics. 

It starts with an overview report looking at many cards of data covering all sorts of demographics and interests reports:

And then it has a “Demographics Details” report, which is a table report allowing you to dig into all of the different primary dimensions you saw in the Overview report, in table form:

Again, you can add a secondary dimension here and break this down in a similar manner to how you would do analysis in Universal Analytics:

Next under the “Users” section is the “Tech” reports. Again, this starts with an “Overview” report, and finishes with a Tech details table report. 

Overview:

Note that my “Platform” shows 100% web, because I only have a web data stream setup for this property. If I were to setup an app stream, this would shift.

Tech Details:

The Life Cycle and User sections are where most of the latest updates land in terms of navigation and reporting, and as I’ve stated, they are definitely upgrades to what was previously there in GA 4 (App+Web). I’m excited to start analyzing in these new reports because not only do they feel more familiar, but they also feel more actionable because I can customize them a lot more than what was previously available. Overall, a great update! 

*These reports are currently rolling out over the next couple of days, so if you don’t see them in you App+Web property yet, check back in a day or two!

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