A metric is a quantitative measurement represented as a sum or ratio. Essentially, it is a set of numbers in Analytics that provides crucial information about your webpage’s performance. By analysing these metrics, you can clearly outline the strengths and weaknesses of your business, helping you identify areas for improvement.
Understanding how to read and interpret reports based on these numbers is vital for advancing your business to the next level. Google Analytics 4 offers a plethora of metrics to track, but how can you focus on the most relevant ones?
Read on to discover how to leverage the right metrics to enhance your business performance and drive success.
1. Users
The Google Analytics 4 users metric is essential for understanding your target audience. This metric displays the total number of users, unique users who interacted with your webpage, providing valuable insights into customer engagement.
By analysing the users metric, you can discover how your customers are interacting with your site. This information helps you determine if your content is engaging enough and if your business is showing positive growth in terms of user numbers. Understanding user behaviour is crucial for improving your online presence.
2. Sessions
The sessions metric is fundamental for understanding how users interact with your web page or application. This metric reveals the number of sessions that have begun, providing a clear picture of user activity.
Although Google Analytics 4 (GA4) does not use the session-scope concept from Universal Analytics (UA), sessions remain a key metric in GA4 reports. Notably, GA4 has improved upon the sessions metric from UA. In GA4, new sessions are not initiated if the same user comes from a different traffic source or continues browsing your webpage past midnight. This enhancement ensures a more accurate count of your web page visitors.
It helps you understand the volume of traffic generated and spot trends in user behaviour, enabling you to make data-driven decisions to optimise your site’s performance and user engagement.
3. Engagement Rate
The engagement rate is a new metric in Google Analytics 4 (GA4) that helps you understand how effectively your customers are interacting with your content. Unlike traditional metrics, the engagement rate provides a clearer picture of genuine user engagement rather than just a simple exit from your website.
In GA4, a session is considered engaged if it meets one of the following criteria:
- It lasted longer than 10 seconds.
- It resulted in one or more conversion events.
- It resulted in two or more page or screen views.
This updated metric is a significant improvement over the bounce rate used in Universal Analytics (UA). While the bounce rate only measures when users leave your site without further interaction, the engagement rate offers a more nuanced view of user activity.
4. Views
The views metric in Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is an essential engagement indicator that tracks the number of times a webpage or app screen has been viewed by users. This metric provides valuable insights into the popularity and reach of your content.
Analysing the views metric helps develop an effective SEO strategy and understand content performance. It identifies which pages attract the most attention and how changes affect user behaviour. Monitoring views allows you to assess content updates’ impact and optimise your strategy to enhance engagement, making informed decisions to improve your website’s performance and resonate with your audience.
5. Event Count
The event count in Google Analytics 4 (GA4) measures the number of times users trigger specific events on your website or app. This metric is crucial for gaining detailed insights into your user journey and understanding customer interactions on a deeper level. BUT, not when you use it at a total level. Always make sure you are reviewing just one event when you use this number. Knowing how many events in total happened as a result of Organic traffic means nothing, as it could have been any event acrss the site causing a spike, but knowing how many times add to cart happened IS useful.
Analysing the event count per event reveals how users engage with your content, the actions they take most frequently, and where they encounter issues. This understanding helps you optimise their experience and serve their needs better. Insights from this metric enable a user-centric approach, improving website functionality and user satisfaction. It helps fine-tune strategies to meet and exceed user expectations.
6. Key Events (Conversions)
The key events metric in Google Analytics 4 (GA4) tracks the number of times users perform actions that are valuable to your business. This could include making a purchase, signing up for a newsletter, or completing a contact form. The fun thing here is that you get to choose which ones count as Key Events and which don’t. We recommend things like newsletter sign ups, contact form submissions and of course, on ecommerce the pre-set Key Event which is purchase. We wouldn’t recommend choosing too many, or it will lose its value and use.
Conversion data is crucial for evaluating your business performance. By monitoring key user actions, you can identify strategies to improve your return on investment (ROI). This metric not only highlights user engagement levels but also provides insights into your website’s user-friendliness, the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns, and emerging trends in customer behaviour.
Tracking key events helps you understand what drives user actions, enabling you to optimise your website and marketing efforts to better meet your business goals and enhance user experience.
If you’re not sure what to set as a Key Event in GA4, then check out our advice on choosing KPIs to track in Google Analytics here.
7. Conversion Rate
While tracking the number of conversions is important, analysing the conversion rate (CR) is equally crucial for a comprehensive understanding of your performance. The conversion rate provides insights into the effectiveness of your campaigns and helps you identify which channels are performing better or worse.
In Google Analytics 4 (GA4), there are two types of conversion rates: User Key Event Rate and Session Key Event Rate.
- User Key Event Rate is the percentage of users who triggered a key event.
- Session Conversion Rate is the percentage of sessions in which any key event occurred.
Typically, the User Key Event Rate is higher than the Session Conversion Rate, as it reflects the proportion of users who convert, regardless of how many sessions it takes.
This metric is foundational for your marketing efforts, especially if you operate an eCommerce store. By understanding and optimising your conversion rates, you can enhance your marketing strategies, improve ROI, and drive business growth.
8. Revenue
The total revenue metric in Google Analytics 4 (GA4) aggregates revenue from purchases, subscriptions, and advertising, offering a comprehensive view of your business’s financial performance.
By analysing total revenue, you can evaluate your business performance against your objectives, track sales trends, and make data-driven adjustments. This metric also allows you to monitor revenue growth over time and identify strategies to boost earnings.
Understanding and optimising your total revenue is essential for refining your business strategies, improving marketing efforts, and driving sustained business success.
If you have any questions then get in touch with our team today.