How to Use Google Analytics 4 to Grow Your Small Business

Google Analytics 4 is a powerful tool that can help you understand your website traffic and make better marketing decisions. As a business owner, you want to know more than just traffic data. You want to know where your visitors are coming from, what pages they are visiting, and how they are interacting with your website. Google Analytics 4 can help you with all of this. It provides insights on your website’s traffic, including where your visitors are coming from, which keywords are driving traffic, and what pages are visited most. You can also drill down into the data to see things like page views, sessions, bounce rate, and session duration. If you are a novice when it comes to Google Analytics 4, this post will push you in the right direction. We will take a detailed look at all of the features that Google Analytics 4 offers and show you how you can use them to improve your website.

Table of Contents:

1. First, What is Google Analytics 4?
2. How Google Analytics 4 can Impact Your Small Business
   • Understanding Your Customers
   • Improving Your Marketing Campaigns
   • Building Your Brand
3. Google Analytics 4 Reports to Better Understand Your Website Traffic
4. Make Sharper Decisions with Google Analytics 4

First, What is Google Analytics 4?

Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is the latest version of Google Analytics. It’s a powerful tool that can help you track and understand your website traffic, so you can make better decisions about your marketing and website optimization. GA4 is different from the previous version of Google Analytics (Universal Analytics) in a few ways:

1. It uses a new data model that is more event-based. This means that GA4 tracks user interactions with your website as events, rather than just pageviews. And you can track things like downloads, form submissions, and other important actions.
2. GA4 is more privacy-focused. It uses a new privacy-preserving measurement protocol that helps to protect the privacy of your users.
3. Finally, GA4 is more machine learning-powered. It uses machine learning to automatically identify patterns in your data and generate insights that you might not have otherwise noticed.

We have described the benefits of Google Analytics 4 and its main features in one of our recent articles. You can check it out here.

How Google Analytics 4 can Impact Your Small Business

Google Analytics 4 is a powerful tool that can help you understand how people interact with their website. By providing insights into traffic sources, demographics, and user behavior, businesses can improve their marketing campaigns, increase ROI, and build their brand. Let’s take a closer look at the benefits that GA4 brings to small business owners.

Understanding your customers

One of the ways to understand your customers with Google Analytics 4 is to look at their demographics. This includes information such as age, gender, location, and interests. It can be further used to create more targeted marketing campaigns and content that is more likely to appeal to their target audience. Additionally, Google Analytics 4 provides insights into your customers behavior. Namely, what pages they visit, how long they stay on the website, and what actions they take. This information can be used to make the website more user-friendly and engaging by improving its design and content.

Improving your marketing campaigns

With Google Analytics 4, you can gain insights into which marketing channels are most effective. Mainly, which keywords are driving traffic to the website, which social media platforms are most popular with your target audience, and which email campaigns are most successful. You can later use this data to allocate marketing budgets more effectively and to create more effective marketing campaigns. Google Analytics 4 features also allow you to track the effectiveness of their ads. You will see how many people click on your ads, how many people convert after clicking on them, and the cost per conversion. This is a great tool to optimize your ad campaigns and increase ROI.

Building your brand

Another way to use Google Analytics 4 for your small business is to research how people find your website. You will see which search terms people use to find your website, which websites link to your website, and which social media platforms your target audience is active on. Besides, you can track how people interact with your website, how long they stay on the website, how many pages they visit, and what actions they take. With this data, you can think about improving the website’s design and content to make it more user-friendly and engaging. Overall, Google Analytics is a robust tool that can help businesses understand their customers, improve their marketing campaigns, and build their brand. If you are a business owner, we encourage you to learn more about Google Analytics 4 and how it can help you grow your business.

Google Analytics 4 Reports to Better Understand Your Website Traffic

Google Analytics 4 (GA4) offers a wide range of reports that can help you track your website traffic and understand your users. These reports can be used to make better business decisions about your marketing, website optimization, and product development. And if you see that a particular marketing channel is not performing well, you can adjust your budget or try a different channel. If you see that people are spending a lot of time on a particular page on your website, you can make that page more prominent in your navigation. And if you see that a particular conversion goal is not being met, you can identify the steps in your funnel where people are dropping off and make changes to improve the user experience. Let’s explore some of the most important GA4 reports in detail and how you can take advantage of them.

1. Acquisition report: This report shows you how people find your website, such as through organic search, paid search, or social media. With this report, you can identify your most effective marketing channels and allocate your marketing budget accordingly. You can also leverage this data to craft and optimize your marketing strategies that result in higher conversions. GA4 allows us to choose which acquisition report we need to use for the data analysis. The User Acquisition and Traffic Acquisition reports in GA4 are both designed to help you understand where your website or app visitors are coming from. However, they differ in the following ways:
2. User Acquisition report: This report shows how new users find your website or app for the first time. It uses first-click attribution, which means that it attributes all events/conversions to the initial traffic source that led a visitor to your website.
3. 
4. Traffic Acquisition report: This report shows where new and returning sessions came from, regardless of whether the user is new or returning. It uses last-click attribution, which means that it attributes all events/conversions to the traffic source that the user was on when they last interacted with your website.In other words, the User Acquisition report shows you how new users are finding your website, while the Traffic Acquisition report shows you where all users are coming from, regardless of whether they are new or returning. Here is a table that summarizes the key differences between the two reports:
   

   Feature	User Acquisition Report	Traffic Acquisition Report
   Audience	New users only	New and returning users
   Attribution	First-click	Last-click
   Purpose	Understand how new users find your website	Understand where all users are coming from

   Now let’s see how you can use the User Acquisition and Traffic Acquisition reports to improve your website or app:

   • User Acquisition report: You can use this report to identify the most effective marketing channels for acquiring new users. For example, if you see that a lot of new users are coming from your organic search results, you can focus your SEO efforts on improving your website’s ranking for relevant keywords.
   • Traffic Acquisition report: You can use this report to identify which traffic sources are driving the most conversions. For example, if you see that a lot of conversions are coming from paid search ads, you can increase your budget for those ads.
5. Engagement report: The engagement report tells you how people are interacting with your website, such as how long they spend on each page and how many pages they view. This information can help you to improve the user experience on your website and to make sure that your visitors are finding the information they are looking for. To use engagement reports in GA4, you can follow these steps:
   1. Go to the Reports tab in GA4
   2. Click on the Engagement category
   3. Select the report that you want to view
   4. You can customize the report by adding or removing metrics and dimensions
   5. You can also filter the report to see data for specific users, sessions, or events
6. 

   Here are some tips for using engagement reports in GA4:

   • Focus on the metrics that are most important to your business. Not all engagement metrics are created equal. Some metrics, such as engaged sessions, are more important than others, such as pages per session.
   • Use the dimensions to drill down into your data. The dimensions in engagement reports can help you understand why users are engaging with your site or app in certain ways. For example, if you see that users who are coming from a particular traffic source are spending more time on your site, you could try to increase your marketing efforts for that traffic source.
   • Compare your data over time. Engagement reports can help you track how your site or app is performing over time. By comparing your data over time, you can identify trends and make necessary changes to improve your site or app.
7. Conversions report: This report shows you how many people are taking desired actions on your website, such as making a purchase, signing up for a newsletter, or downloading a white paper. This information can help you to track the success of your marketing campaigns and to identify areas where you can improve your conversion rates. To use the Conversion report in GA4, you can follow these steps:
   • Go to the Reports tab in GA4
   • Click on the Conversions category
   • Select the report that you want to view
   • You can customize the report by adding or removing metrics and dimensions
   • You can also filter the report to see data for specific users, sessions, or events
8. 

   Here are some of the metrics that you can use in the Conversion report:

   • Conversions: This metric shows the total number of conversions that occurred during the selected date range
   • Conversion rate: This metric shows the percentage of users who converted
   • Conversion value: This metric shows the total revenue generated by conversions
   • Average conversion value: This metric shows the average amount of revenue generated by each conversion
9. The Conversion report allows you to use the following dimensions:
   • Conversion action: This dimension shows the specific action that users took to convert
   • Source/medium: This dimension shows the traffic source that users came from
   • Device: This dimension shows the device that users used to access your site or app
   • Session duration: This dimension shows the length of each session
10. User report: As a business owner, it is essential to understand your website’s audience. The User report in Google Analytics 4 can help you do just that. This report provides clear and consistent data about your audience, including their demographics, interests, and behavior. This information can help you to understand whether your website is attracting the right audience and to create content that is relevant to your target audience.To use the User report in GA4, you can follow these steps:
    • Go to the Reports tab in GA4
    • Click on the User category
    • Select the report that you want to view
    • You can customize the report by adding or removing metrics and dimensions
    • You can also filter the report to see data for specific users, sessions, or events
11. 

    The User report can be used to:

    • Understand your users’ behavior: The report shows you how often users visit your site or app, how long they stay, and what pages they view. This information can help you understand what your users are interested in and how they are interacting with your site or app.
    • Identify your target audience: The report shows you the demographics and interests of your users. This information can help you identify your target audience and create content that is more relevant to them.
    • Track user engagement over time: The report shows you how user activity has changed over time. This information can help you identify trends in user behavior and make changes to your site or app to improve user engagement.

Make Sharper Decisions with Google Analytics 4

Google Analytics 4 is a powerful tool that can help you track and understand your website traffic. It can provide you with insights into who is visiting your site, where they are coming from, and what pages they are viewing. This information can help you improve your website’s content, design, and marketing campaigns. If you are considering using Google Analytics 4 to promote your small business, don’t hesitate to get in touch with us. We can help you set up your account and get started using Google Analytics 4. We will also make your data manageable and discover the story of your website visitors.