Free Form report in Google Analytics 4 (Analysis Hub Exploration) + 3 report examples

if you have ever tried to use google analytics 4 you probably noticed a section called analysis hub here you can dig deeper into your data and perform ad hoc analysis in this video we will take a closer look at one part of the analysis hub which is called exploration reports also in this video i will show you how to create three reports that were available by default in universal analytics landing page report site search report and one report that is related to e-commerce tracking [Music] hey my name is julius and welcome to analytics media youtube channel where you can learn google tag manager and google analytics and if you want to stay up to date with google analytics 4 consider subscribing as of the moment of recording this video the built-in reports in google analytics 4 are quite limited a lot of our favorite reports are missing hopefully this will change in the future but right now if you want to dig deeper into your data you will have to use exploration reports this is quite an advanced feature for many google analytics 4 users and there are many things to keep in mind so make sure that you watch this video till the end alright so let's take a look to get started log in to your google analytics four property and then go to analysis analysis hub to start an exploration report you can click on the blank right here or click on exploration and here you will see a sample report but we are soon going to edit it in exploration reports there are three sections the first column is variables then there is tab settings and then there is an output or in other words the report that is generated based on your configurations from the first two columns first let's take a look at the variables column here you can change the name of your report then you can change the date range and if you want to use some segments dimensions or metrics in this report they must be first added to this column so for example if i want to use dimensions in this report right now i will be able to do that only with these six dimensions in google analytics a dimension basically means a parameter that describes something for example event name city also might be order id product name and so on then we have metrics so if you want to use some metrics in the report you also have to include them in this section you can include segments dimensions or metrics by clicking the plus icon next to that particular section so for example if i want to create a report based on the page url or page title then i would have to add that dimension by clicking this plus icon right here and then entering the name of the parameter in the search field or just looking for it so i will show several examples of how to create sample reports and we will definitely use these sections right here then in the second column which is called tab settings you can configure some additional settings of how your reports will look like here we have several techniques so right now in this video we will be focusing only on exploration but you can also create cohort analysis funnel analysis path analysis and so on these fields and settings depend on what kind of technique is selected in this drop down so for example if we selected funnel analysis different settings would appear right here speaking of exploration you can select different types of visualization usually i find myself using the table but also if you want you can use something like bar chart or donut chart or map or something else if you want to compare several segments in the same table you can add them right here for example i can compare mobile traffic with tablet traffic and then we will see how many mobile users and how many tablet users are coming from these cities to our website if you want to remove some items from here you can just click this x icon right here then we have some additional fields right here so if you want for example to change the dimension from city to something else you can just drag it over right here and then we will see the list of all most popular events that were tracked by this particular property or actually in fact in this case the active users metric is maybe not the best one to see the event counts instead what we could do that we could scroll down to the values section and replace active users with event count and then you will see a report that looks something like this although it looks like the sorting doesn't work that well let's click on it right here and now we can see the most popular events and we can see the counts right here if it makes sense to you can add even more dimensions right here and then they will be displayed as rows you know what in fact we can do a quick example so here i can let's say select region i can drop it over the event name and then i can select the device category like this and then that second dimension will be added as an additional column right here so right now we have one row for california and desktop but let's be honest in this case this looks a bit confusing i mean it's not very convenient to see both dimensions in the same row i mean in some other cases it might make sense but in this case we could move the device category to columns and that way we can see that california as a dimension has its own row and then we can see desktop mobile tablet and totals as device categories because each dimension is now available as a column right here you know what i don't want to make this video too boring with things like hey you could hypothetically do this or do that let's create three reports as examples and then you will see how things are working and after that i will share some additional tips about certain features in this report so let's start with the landing page report in universal analytics we had a report where we could see landing pages or in other words the pages on which the users start their sessions unfortunately as of the moment of recording this video google analytics 4 does not offer this report by default but we could do some tweaks here and there and we can actually try to recreate that report in this analysis hub so to do that let's first remove all the dimensions and metrics that we have here and now you will see an empty screen right here so speaking of landing pages there is an automatically tracked event in google analytics 4 which is called session started so in other words landing page is a page where session started event occurs that is why the first thing that we can do is that we can narrow down the list of events to just one event which is session started so in the tab settings column we can scroll down and in the filters section right here we can click it and then select event name if you cannot see the event name here you have to make sure that you have added event name as a dimension right here and here we can enter that event name must exactly match the name called session start click apply and now i need to include in this report the page url or some other dimension which will tell me which page was the starting point of the session so i should take a look at the dimensions section in the variables column and unfortunately i cannot see anything related to page so i should click the plus icon here and then in the search i should enter page and then start looking for some parameter and here i see some custom dimensions which is page url page title so someone configured these parameters in the property so i guess we can use that also i see that there are some built-in dimensions which is page path and page title so in this case let's select the page path and then click apply now i have to include this dimension in the tab settings column right here so i should click it and drag it to rows because i want each row to be a separate page where that session start event occurred but once i do that i still do not see any data in the report that is because the last piece is missing here and that is at least one metric in this case things depend on your imagination and your goals so as an example i could include a metric which is event count so i can scroll down and drag this event count right here and now you should see the report of all the pages and this is sorted by the event count so event count in this case means how many times did we get the session start event also you might be interested in the number of users how many of them started their session on this or on other pages so we can go to the metrics section in the variables column and drag the active users metric from here to here and if you want to add some additional metrics you can do that by first clicking the plus icon selecting those metrics and then dragging them right here by the way if you want to include some custom data in this report for example custom dimensions you first have to make sure that that parameter is registered as a custom dimension in google analytics 4 property and you can do that by going to all events and then including that custom parameter by clicking manage custom definitions right here unfortunately i cannot do that because i am on the official google analytics for demo account and here i have only read and analyze permissions which do not allow me to add some additional custom definitions right here now let's take a look at another example which is site search report in google analytics for by default such report does not exist at least yet on my website people can use the site search feature to look for a certain content so this is definitely useful to know what my visitors are looking for and in fact this information is automatically tracked by enhanced measurement however it is not displayed in the default reports so if we want to build a custom report in the analysis hub about site search first what we have to do is that we have to obviously enable the enhanced measurement in the data stream so right now i have already done that this is site search enabled then the automatic site search tracking is sending a parameter called search term and if i go to the all events section and click manage custom definitions here i have to create a new custom definition which is search term written exactly like this so i should go to create custom dimensions and enter search underscore term here and after that you should wait for up to 24 hours and once this happens then you can go to analysis analysis hub and then click exploration and start a new report in this case once again i will delete all the pre-built and all predefined information right here then in the filters i will include that i am interested only in the events of which names exactly match view search results like this click apply then in the values i will include event count or maybe i can actually even include users and then as a dimension in the rows section i will include a new dimension which is called search term this is the dimension that i have registered as a custom dimension in my google analytics 4 property click apply so now after i click this plus icon and after i included this dimension in the report it is available right here so now i should drag it in the rows section here and here i will see the list of most popular search terms in fact i see that sometimes search term is not captured by the functionality because well maybe people just do the search term by clicking search button but they do not enter the actual keyword so in this case let's say that i don't want to see this in my report so i can just do the right click and then select exclude selection like this and this will automatically add another filter that excludes search term does not match not set and the last thing that we can do as an example is let's say that we want to know some data about our coupon codes which coupon codes are most used among our clients so for that we can just click the plus icon right here click exploration and that way we will start a new report right here then we will have to select a new dimension which is coupon or in fact item coupon or order coupon well let's say that in this case we are interested in the order coupon so click checkbox right here click apply then include that custom dimension right here so drag it and include it in the rows then we could add some metrics so in this case active users i'm not sure if it's valuable i mean if it makes sense to you you can keep it but in my case i will remove it and instead i will take a look at transactions so we see the number of transactions then what we could do that maybe we could include revenue as well so let's add new metric right here by clicking the plus icon and enter revenue and select total revenue right here click apply then you can add this total revenue right here and if you want you can also add some other metrics if they make sense also let's get rid of this not set so i can just do the right click exclude selection so in this quick example we see order coupons and how many transactions were using these coupon codes and what was the order revenue of those transactions where these coupon codes were used and for the end of this video i wanted to also mention several quick tips that you might find useful so for example if you want to quickly add a certain dimension or certain metric you don't have to drag it always from here to here it is enough to just do a double click and i have done that just now and as you can see active users metric was added right here now another thing that you can also tweak is the cell type if you don't like these bar charts embedded in every cell you can switch to plain text or you can switch to heat map and the cells with higher values are now displayed darker if you did some mistakes and you want to go several steps back you can do the undo right here or you can go forward by clicking redo if you want to duplicate a tab in your analysis report you can click here and do duplicate this icon right here shows the sampling of your report if you see a green icon right here this means that this report is based on 100 of the available data but if you see a yellow icon this means that sampling has kicked in and this report is based only on partial data also if you have enough permissions you can export this report by clicking this icon right here and then you can select the format that you are interested in also you can share this report with others so to sum up exploration reports are definitely a really cool feature in google analytics for however it takes some time to get used to it because when you start to work with it for the first time and if you are a beginner in google analytics some things might look overwhelming but you should just keep trying and over time you will get better at it and that is how you use exploration reports in google analytics 4. even though there are still some things missing this is a pretty powerful feature for example i would really like if there was a community template gallery for reports where we could just import templates made by others that way we could save a lot of time hopefully this will be made available in the future if you found this video useful hit the thumbs up button below the video because it helps me continue working on this channel also if you want to learn more about google tech manager and google analytics 4 consider subscribing to this channel my name is julius this is analytics mania and i'll see you in the next video [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: Analytics Mania - Google Tag Manager & Analytics

Views: 8,689

Rating: 4.9873819 out of 5

Keywords: exploration report, Google analytics 4 report, google analytics 4 exploration report, ga4 reporting Google analytics 4 analysis hub, google analytics 4, google analytics 4 landing page report, google analytics 4 site search report, google analytics 4 coupon report web analytics, digital analytics, digital marketing, Google analytics, free form report, analysis hub, funnel exploration, path exploration

Id: f_ygmXjB-U8

Length: 15min 17sec (917 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 09 2021