There are certain GA4 reports I always look for in Google Analytics 4 (GA4) that help me understand where issues could be arising and where opportunities lie, and today I want to share a few of them with you.
1. Landing page report
This first one might seem obvious to some of you, but naturally I’m going to want to look at landing pages. These are often the pages that give users their first impression of your brand but can be massively overlooked.
Why are they overlooked? Well, some popular landing pages are not going to be set up as landing pages, even though they are. The homepage of any site is designed as a landing page, it should tell users what the site is about, who it’s for and why it’s worth sticking around. But pages like collection pages (PLPs) and product pages (PDPs) on e-commerce stores can also be landing pages and these rarely tell the full story.
Engagement rate
What is engagement rate in GA4? Engagement rate is the percentage of sessions that are deemed to be engaged. Google Analytics defines an engaged session as one where one or more of the following conditions are met:
- The session lasted more than 10 seconds,
- One or more key events have been triggered.
- At least 2 page or screen views are recorded.
Your Landing page report is going to tell you if you have an engagement rate problem for your top landing pages.
What is a good landing page engagement rate?
Good landing page engagement depends on your sector, but anything from 65% is generally accepted as very good. Anything around a 55% engagement rate and your landing page is doing well generally speaking, but I often see pages with 20% engagement rate or lower.
Now if that 20% is on a blog page, we would still want it to be much higher, but typically it will never be as high as more interactive pages like a homepage or collection page that lend themselves to navigation (which would trigger condition 3 of an engaged session from above).
You should investigate any landing page that has an engagement rate significantly lower than your site average, and any important landing page with an engagement rate lower than 50%.
Views per session
Your views per session in your Landing page report is going to tell you how many pages on average users viewed when they landed on that page (not how many times they viewed that page). This is particularly important if you have a multi-step conversion funnel with each step having its own URL. You are going to want to see a high views per session for your landing page if you have this kind of setup.
A high views per session suggests your target audience is engaged, but it isn’t necessarily always a bad thing if the views per session isn’t super high. For example, on an e-commerce store if users can find a repeat purchase quickly and buy it with a couple of clicks then there could be a low number of views per session but a relatively good conversion rate.
We can sometimes see this kind of behaviour when we look at returning users to an e-commerce store as they are more focused in their task and have a lower number of views per session but a higher conversion rate than new users. It is important therefore to consider the context of your views per session for each landing page. Would you expect this to be high or low?
Average engagement time per session
Again, this is one of those KPIs that could be lower for really engaged returning users. However, unlike views per session, you would still want it to be a decent amount of time – long enough for them to realistically achieve what it is they set out to do.
If you have an average engagement time per session of less than 5 seconds for a collection landing page on an e-commerce store for example, this is unlikely to be long enough for even the most committed user to make a purchase.
Average engagement time per session is therefore generally perceived to be better the higher it is. Users are spending time with your site in focus on their device, making it more likely they are actively engaged with what they are seeing.
2. Page path and screen class report
Why do I choose the Page path and screen class report (the one with the URL strings rather than page names), well I guess this is a hangover from Universal analytics, I just got comfortable with it there. Plus, pages are not always named intuitively so I prefer it to either of the page title reports.
This report is great for giving you a rounder picture of where to focus your conversion efforts. Unlike the landing page report which tells you the popular pages users landed on, the Page path and screen class report is going to tell you which pages saw the most users overall. This is important because you may have a page which doesn’t feature as a landing page, but which receives a lot of traffic and is prime for optimisation.
This can happen, if you are regularly linking back to a certain page within your site or linking to it from another traffic heavy page. We saw this on the All About Dog Food website where an article on types of dog food was linked to from the main search page on the site. You can read all about this in our example CRO audit, just fill in your details below to take a look.
3. Path exploration
Taking a break from Reports and hopping over to the Explorations for a minute, I particularly like the Path exploration. This is great for mapping out user flows within the site, where are users going after they have viewed a particular page and is it the page you want them to go to?
Each page should have a goal, to move users closer to the end conversion. If users are going backwards and forwards between pages or they are dropping off suddenly, then there could be an issue with that step in the user flow.
4. Browser report
One of the first things I look for is if a site is performing worse on a particular browser. Often pages will load differently on different browsers. As a recent example, a Trustpilot widget we had added to a client’s page showed up perfectly on Safari, but was broken on Chrome.
If your site has a dramatically different engagement rate, views per session, or average engagement time per session from other browsers, then it may indicate a technical problem that needs looking at by a developer.
5. Device category & screen resolution reports
Although it’s easy to assume that all sites are being accessed primarily on mobile now-a-days, that isn’t always the case. B2B sites in particular may find they have a higher proportion of desktop traffic compared to mobile as users sit at their desks to research.
It is also worth considering screen resolution alongside device category. Even if most of your users are on desktop, how your site looks on a laptop screen compared to a large stand-alone monitor will make a big difference.
This matters when thinking about design as your first designs should be for the most popular device type and screen resolution. Although design for other popular devices should be done, you want to focus on the version most people will be seeing.
Summary of GA4 Reports
These are just a few of the reports I look at when evaluating a site for a CRO Audit, or as part of our full service CRO. Each one adds something new that builds the picture of where things could be going wrong and where to focus.
Your Landing page report gives you vital engagement KPI data, you Page path and screen class report tells you what other pages on your site are important for conversions, your Path exploration takes you on a journey with your users, your Browser report helps you identify technical issues, and your Device category and screen resolution reports help you decide where to start in design.
If you are interested in having your GA4 property looked at by one of our experts, get in touch today.
Hi, I’m Charlotte. I love writing about user psychology and tips I’ve picked up from leading user research and CRO projects. Get in touch if you’d like to work with me to improve the user experience on your site or click here to learn more about your future CRO team.