TL;DR

• Every ad platform over-counts conversions by design — Meta, Google, and LinkedIn each claim credit for the same customer using overlapping attribution windows. 
• The fix is a four-tier trust hierarchy: CRM closed-won data first, server-side event data second, GA4 third, platform dashboards last. 
• Build a weekly reconciliation check (platform sum vs. CRM actuals), standardize UTM taxonomy across all campaigns, and surface CRM-verified CPA and pipeline in a single dashboard no ad platform controls. 
• Good enough attribution means UTM coverage above 90%, CRM source fields on 95%+ of closed-won deals, and platform data used for optimization only — never for budget justification.

Google Ads claims 47 conversions. Meta claims 52. LinkedIn claims 31. Your CRM shows 38 closed customers.

Someone is lying – and it’s not your CRM.

If you’ve ever pulled platform reports into a single spreadsheet and watched the numbers explode past anything resembling reality, you already know the feeling. The sum of what every platform claims credit for routinely exceeds your actual customer count by 50%, sometimes 100% or more. You’re not miscounting. You’re watching every ad platform grade its own homework.

When platforms grade their own homework, everyone gets an A+.

The over-counting is not a broken pixel or a misconfigured UTM. The over-counting is intentional—built into the incentive structure of every ad platform that sells you impressions and measures its own performance. According to Databox research on attribution, one in four GTM leaders said at least a quarter of last quarter’s pipeline was misattributed due to missing or incorrect click data. Nearly 7% reported error rates of 50% or more. 

In the same research, 32.43% reported spending 16–30 hours per month just cleaning and reconciling attribution data, before any analysis happens.

By the end of this article, you’ll understand why the numbers are structurally wrong, which data to trust and in what order, and how to build an attribution view that supports real budget decisions—not one that validates whatever each platform wants you to believe.

Why Every Platform “Wins” the Same Conversion

Attribution over-counting is a revenue model problem, not a data quality problem.

Every ad platform measures its own performance against the widest possible window it can defensibly claim. The result: summing all platform-reported conversions routinely produces 150–250% of actual closed customers. Three platforms, one customer, three conversions counted.

The mechanical cause is attribution window conflicts. Meta defaults to a 7-day click / 1-day view window. Google defaults to a 30-day click window. LinkedIn uses its own rules.

A prospect clicks a LinkedIn ad on Day 1. Clicks a Google Search ad on Day 12. Converts on Day 14. All three platforms count the conversion. None of them are technically wrong by their own rules.

View-through attribution is the most abused lever in the system.

On January 12, 2026, Meta permanently removed two attribution windows from its Ads Insights API: the 7-day view and 28-day view. The change was announced in October 2025. Most advertisers missed it.

The practical result: if you run awareness campaigns or target prospects with longer consideration cycles, a portion of your previously attributed Meta conversions stopped being counted overnight — not because performance dropped, but because the measurement window shrank. Industry analysis puts the conversion drop at 15–30% for accounts that relied on those longer view windows.

Then in March 2026, Meta reclassified what counts as a “click.” Likes, shares, and saves no longer trigger the 7-day click attribution window — only link clicks do. That’s a second, quieter conversion drop that most teams haven’t diagnosed yet.

If your Meta numbers look worse than Q4 2025 without an obvious performance reason, you’re likely looking at a measurement shift, not a channel decline. Before cutting Meta budget, run the CRM reconciliation check: how many closed customers does your CRM attribute to Meta over the same period? That number hasn’t changed. Only Meta’s count of it has.

A prospect sees (does not click) a Meta display ad, then searches your company on Google, then converts. Meta counts it. The mechanic is not fraudulent, but platforms default to having it enabled, and the numbers inflate in ways that benefit the platform, not your understanding of what actually happened.

The structural incentive is worth naming directly: these platforms have billions of dollars in quarterly revenue tied to demonstrating ROAS. Their measurement systems are not neutral observers. The same companies that sell you the impressions built the systems that measure whether those impressions worked. When the entity measuring performance is the same entity selling the product being measured, the measurement will favor the seller, every time.

Platform data is not useless. But it is unreliable as the sole measure of marketing’s contribution to revenue. The platforms were built to justify continued ad spend, while your job is to figure out what actually worked.

What Breaks When You Can’t Trust the Numbers

The attribution gap does not stay inside your spreadsheets. It cascades into every budget conversation, every channel decision, every forecast you hand to leadership.

Your VP of Marketing asks which channel to scale. You show them platform-reported ROAS, and LinkedIn looks like it’s outperforming Meta 3:1. But the CRM tells a different story: Meta-sourced leads close at twice the rate. The platform numbers pointed you toward the wrong channel.

Your CFO asks what marketing contributed to pipeline last quarter. You can give them platform numbers (which add up to more customers than you actually have) or CRM numbers (which require manual reconciliation you haven’t done). Neither answer builds confidence. And the reconciliation work is not trivial: in Databox’s Time to Insight survey, 64.29% of respondents said it typically takes 1–3 days to gather data to answer a single business question—long enough that in most weekly reviews, the decision window has already closed.

Your demand gen lead wants to cut underperforming campaigns. But “underperforming” according to which system? Google’s conversion count? HubSpot’s lead source field? The numbers don’t match, so the decision stalls.

The cost of broken attribution is not bad data. The cost is bad decisions, or no decisions at all.

Which Number Do You Trust? A Hierarchy for Attribution Data

When data sources conflict (and they always will) the answer is not to average them or pick the one that looks best. A deterministic trust hierarchy exists. Follow it.

Tier 1: CRM Closed-Won Data

CRM data is not modeled. Not estimated. Not subject to attribution window interpretation. Closed-won opportunity records, mapped to their original lead source via UTM-populated form fields or CRM source tagging, represent ground truth.

The CRM is the only data source that records a human being giving money to your company.

Every other data source should be evaluated against the CRM. If your CRM shows 38 closed customers and Google claims 47, the CRM is right. Always.

Tier 2: Server-Side Event Data

Server-side tracking (Meta Conversions API, Google Enhanced Conversions, server-side GTM) fires from your own infrastructure, not from a browser-dependent pixel.

Server-side tracking is more reliable than client-side tracking because ad blockers, cookie deprecation, and iOS ATT restrictions do not affect it. Server-side data is not ground truth, it still routes through platform identity matching, but it is the most reliable signal below CRM data.

Tier 3: GA4 Cross-Channel View

GA4 has no financial incentive to favor any channel – it’s is channel-agnostic. That makes it more trustworthy than any individual platform’s reporting when evaluating cross-channel performance.

Its limitations (cookie-dependent client-side tracking, underreporting under privacy conditions) are well-documented and consistent, which means GA4 can serve directionally even when absolute numbers are unreliable.

Tier 4: Platform-Reported Conversions

Google Ads, Meta Ads Manager, LinkedIn Campaign Manager. All useful for in-platform optimization signals: bid strategy, audience performance, creative testing.

Do not use platform-reported conversions as the measure of marketing’s contribution to revenue. Platform dashboards were not built for that purpose – they were built to justify continued ad spend.

The Weekly Reconciliation Check

A concrete, repeatable workflow surfaces most attribution integrity problems before they compound into bad budget decisions:

Once a week, pull total conversions from all active ad platforms. Compare the sum to new leads or closed-won deals in CRM for the same period. If the platform sum exceeds CRM actuals by more than 10–15%, flag it as a tracking quality issue—not a budgeting success.

Running the check weekly prevents the slow drift where platform numbers become the default reality and CRM data becomes an afterthought.

What a Decision-Ready Dashboard Actually Looks Like

Before walking through how to build the system, look at what the end state delivers.

A decision-ready attribution dashboard shows you four things in a single view:

CPA by channel (CRM-verified)

Cost per closed customer by channel, calculated using CRM closed-won data—not platform conversions. When Google says a lead cost $47 but your CRM shows the actual cost-per-customer from Google is $312, the dashboard shows $312.

MQLs and SQLs by source

Total qualified leads from each paid channel, pulled from your CRM’s lifecycle stage fields—not platform-reported “conversions” that may or may not reflect actual pipeline.

Pipeline and revenue by source

Total pipeline value and closed-won revenue attributed by lead source from CRM. The number your CFO actually wants.

Cost per MQL/SQL by channel

The metric that tells you whether LinkedIn at $180/MQL is actually outperforming Google at $95/MQL once you factor in conversion rates down the funnel.

A marketing team using this view discovered LinkedIn was driving 2x the CRM-verified pipeline of Meta at equal spend. They reallocated budget. Pipeline increased materially quarter over quarter. The insight was not perfect attribution—it was directionally correct attribution acted on consistently.

The platforms will keep grading their own homework, while the dashboard grades them against reality.

How to Build It

A functional attribution system does not require a data engineering team or a six-figure analytics stack. It requires four things done in the right order: clean inputs, a reliable event layer, a CRM as the anchor, and a single dashboard that no ad platform controls.

Standardize Your UTM Taxonomy

Every paid campaign across every platform should use a consistent UTM structure:

• utm_source: platform (google, meta, linkedin)
• utm_medium: paid-social, paid-search, display
• utm_campaign: campaign name
• utm_content: creative ID or variant

Standardize the taxonomy now, enforce it with a naming convention doc, and audit it quarterly. Without consistent UTMs, CRM lead source data is garbage. The entire hierarchy below it fails.

Implement Server-Side Tracking

Deploy Meta Conversions API and Google Enhanced Conversions. Both are free to implement (cost is development time, typically 1–3 days with a developer or via server-side GTM).

Server-side tracking recovers a meaningful portion of the signal lost to iOS ATT and cookie deprecation. It reduces the gap between platform-reported and CRM-verified conversions, not because it makes platform data more accurate in an absolute sense, but because it reduces modeled fill-in, which is where the inflation is worst.

Close the Loop in Your CRM

Every closed-won opportunity must have a mapped original source. Populate it from the UTM on the first form fill, the channel on the first touchpoint, or manual entry for high-touch pipeline.

HubSpot’s “Original Source” field and Salesforce’s “Lead Source” field are the minimum viable implementations.

Without CRM-level source tagging, Tier 1 data does not exist. Only platform data with extra steps exists.

Build the Unified Dashboard

The final step is surfacing the right KPIs in a single view that no ad platform controls. That challenge is more common than most teams expect: 73.13% of respondents in Databox’s Time to Insight survey identified data spread across multiple sources as their top reporting challenge, which is precisely the problem a unified attribution dashboard solves.

Databox connects your CRM (HubSpot or Salesforce), your ad platforms (Google Ads, Meta, LinkedIn), and your pipeline data into a single dashboard—without requiring a data engineer or custom SQL. You can even get the full power over your data with datasets, which allows you to join tables, even between CRMs (as long as you have a common ID like email). You can calculate metrics like cost per MQL by dividing total Google Ads spend by MQL volume from HubSpot, then track the trend on a 12-week rolling scorecard.

Grab our pre-built paid ads dashboard templates

Track your Paid Ads metrics and KPIs and analyze your Paid Ads performance

 

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If you’re also working on reducing wasted ad spend before you rebuild your attribution layer, this guide on cutting paid ad waste without losing pipeline covers the budget side of the same problem.

The specific capability that matters: you can build the CRM-verified view—the one that tells the truth—rather than toggling between three platform dashboards that were never designed to agree.

What “Good Enough” Attribution Actually Looks Like

The most paralyzing belief in marketing attribution is that it must be perfect before it can be used.

Attribution cannot be perfect. The goal is not precision, but direction.

A system that reliably tells you Channel A drives 3x the verified revenue of Channel B is worth more than a theoretically perfect model you have not built yet. The 10–15% CRM reconciliation threshold is not perfection. The threshold is signal integrity.

What “good enough” looks like in practice:

• UTM coverage on >90% of paid traffic (not 100%, it is not realistic)
• CRM source fields populated on >95% of closed-won deals
• Weekly reconciliation check running consistently
• One dashboard showing CRM-verified CPA and pipeline by channel
• Platform data used for optimization, not for budget justification

The platforms will keep grading their own homework. Your job is to build the system that grades them against reality.

Begin with the CRM. Build the reconciliation check. Surface the numbers that matter in a dashboard you control.

That is how you build an attribution view your CFO will actually trust.

The post The Ad Attribution Problem: Every Platform Claims Credit, Nobody Tells the Truth appeared first on Databox.

Driving traffic is one thing, but understanding what users do once they land on your site is what separates successful businesses from the rest. That’s where Google Analytics 4 (GA4) Events Reports come in.

GA4 doesn’t just track page views—it provides a detailed breakdown of user interactions, from button clicks and video views to purchases and form submissions. 

But let’s be real—GA4’s interface isn’t the most intuitive, and making sense of event data can feel overwhelming.

That’s why we’re breaking down everything you need to know about Events Reports in GA4. 

Whether you’re new to GA4 or looking to optimize your reporting, this guide will help you track, analyze, and leverage event data to improve conversions, refine marketing strategies, and prove ROI.

What Counts as an Event in Google Analytics 4?

Before we go any further, let’s clarify what Google considers an event in GA4.

With the shift from Universal Analytics (UA) to Google Analytics 4 (GA4), Google completely redefined how user interactions are tracked. 

In the past, UA categorized interactions into different hit types—pageviews, transactions, and social interactions. But GA4 ditches those old rules and treats everything as an event instead.

So, what actually counts as an event?

Any interaction a user has with your website or app. That includes clicks, form submissions, video plays, purchases, scroll depth—even how long someone engages with your content.

Unlike UA, which had rigid event structures (Category, Action, Label), GA4 gives you complete flexibility. Events are now parameter-based, meaning you can track exactly what matters to your business—without being stuck in a predefined framework.

Types of Events in Google Analytics 4

Google Analytics 4 (GA4) organizes it’s analytic events into four main categories to help you track user interactions effectively. 

Unlike Universal Analytics, where you had to manually set up most events, GA4 comes with built-in tracking capabilities and allows for extensive customization.

Let’s break down the four types of events in GA4 and how they work.

1. Automatically Collected Events

GA4 automatically tracks certain user interactions as soon as you set it up—no additional configuration required. These events provide a baseline for understanding website activity and include:

• first_visit – When a user lands on your website for the first time.
• session_start – When a new session begins.
• user_engagement – When a user actively interacts with your site.

These foundational events give you basic traffic insights without any extra setup.

2. Enhanced Measurement Events

GA4 takes automation a step further with Enhanced Measurement Events, which can be enabled with a simple toggle in the settings. These events capture common user actions without requiring code changes. 

Some key examples include:

• page_view – Every time a user loads a new page.
• scroll – When a user scrolls at least 90% of a page.
• click – When a user clicks an outbound link.
• file_download – When a user downloads a document, PDF, or other file.
• video_start, video_progress, video_complete – For tracking video engagement.

These events expand your tracking capabilities instantly, making it easier to measure user engagement.

3. Recommended Events

For businesses that need more specific tracking, Google offers a set of recommended events tailored for different industries like eCommerce, travel, and gaming. These require manual setup but provide valuable insights. 

Some common examples include:

• add_to_cart – When a user adds an item to their shopping cart.
• purchase – When a transaction is completed.
• sign_up – When a user registers for an account.

Using recommended events helps GA4 provide better reports and integrate seamlessly with Google Ads and other tools.

4. Custom Events

Sometimes, predefined events aren’t enough—and that’s where custom events come in. These allow you to track interactions unique to your business by defining your own event names and parameters.

For example, you might want to track:

• cta_click – When a user clicks a key call-to-action button.
• form_submission – When a user completes a lead form.
• feature_usage – When a user interacts with a specific tool on your site.

Custom events require manual setup using Google Tag Manager or code, but they provide maximum flexibility for your tracking needs.

Pro Tip: Don’t rush into creating custom events. GA4 provides built-in tracking for key interactions, reducing the need for manual setup. Before setting up anything manually, check if Enhanced Measurement or Recommended Events cover what you need. Stick to Google’s predefined events whenever possible.

How to Set Up Event Tracking in GA4

GA4 doesn’t track everything you need right out of the box. 

Sure, it automatically logs basic interactions like page views and scrolls, but what about the actions that actually matter to your business—like button clicks, sign-ups, purchases, or video engagement?

If you want to measure the interactions that drive conversions, you’ll need to set up custom event tracking.

Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to do it:

1. Check for Existing Events First

Before setting up anything new, see what GA4 already tracks. GA4 automatically collects basic events, and Enhanced Measurement covers things like page views, scrolls, and outbound clicks.

• Go to Admin > Events in your GA4 property.
• Check the list of existing events to avoid duplicates.

If the event you need isn’t listed, move on to manual setup.

2. Create a Custom Event in GA4

If GA4 doesn’t track a specific action by default, you can create a custom event directly in GA4’s admin panel.

• Navigate to Admin > Events > Create Event.
• Click Create and enter an event name (e.g., cta_click for tracking button clicks).
• Define the conditions for the event, such as:
  • Parameter: click_text
  • Value: “Get Started” (to track clicks on a specific button)
• Click Save and Publish your event.

This method works best for simple customizations but doesn’t offer full flexibility for complex tracking.

3. Use Google Tag Manager for Advanced Tracking

For more control, use Google Tag Manager (GTM) to set up event tracking. This allows you to track button clicks, form submissions, video engagement, and more without editing website code.

Here’s how:

1. Open Google Tag Manager and create a new tag.
2. Set the tag type to GA4 Event and connect it to your GA4 Measurement ID.
3. Define the event name (e.g., signup_click).
4. Add event parameters to track extra details (e.g., button_text).
5. Set a trigger (e.g., clicks on a specific button).
6. Save and publish your changes.

With GTM, you can track almost anything without any developer support.

4. Test Your Event Tracking

After setting up an event, make sure it’s working correctly before relying on the data.

• Open GA4 > Admin > DebugView to see live events.
• Use Google Tag Assistant or Preview Mode in GTM to test triggers.
• Check your Real-Time report to confirm the event is firing.

If the event doesn’t show up, double-check your setup and make sure there are no missing parameters.

How to Track Events in Google Analytics 4

Tracking events is only half the battle—now you need to make sense of the data. GA4’s reporting isn’t as straightforward as Universal Analytics, and if you’re not looking in the right place, you might think your event data is missing altogether.

Here’s how you can find and analyze all of your reports in GA4:

1. Access the Standard Event Report

Go to GA4 > Reports > Engagement > Events

This section provides a summary of all tracked events, including:

• Event name – The specific action tracked (e.g., add_to_cart, form_submission).
• Event count – The total number of times the event was triggered.
• Users – The number of unique users who performed the event.
• Event revenue (for eCommerce) – The total revenue attributed to the event.

If a newly created event doesn’t appear right away, GA4 may need a few hours to process it.

2. Use DebugView for Real-Time Event Tracking

For real-time verification, DebugView shows events as they happen.

Go to GA4 > Admin > DebugView

This tool helps confirm whether events fire correctly and capture the right parameters. If an event doesn’t show up, check the setup in Google Tag Manager or GA4’s event settings.

3. Build Custom Reports in Explorations

GA4’s built-in reports provide a basic event overview, while Explorations allow for a more detailed analysis.

Go to GA4 > Explore > Create a New Exploration

With custom reports, you can:

• Segment event data by traffic source, device type, or user demographics.
• Track event trends over time to spot patterns.
• Analyze event performance in relation to conversions.

4. Add Key Events to Your GA4 Dashboard

If you frequently check specific events, pin them to your GA4 Report Snapshot for quick access.

Go to GA4 > Reports > Engagement > Events, click the three-dot menu next to an event, and select “Pin to Report Snapshot.”

This keeps high-priority event data front and center without unnecessary navigation.

Pro Tip: Want a better way to track and visualize event data? Connect GA4 with Databox to build real-time dashboards and eliminate manual reporting.

GA4 Event Parameters

GA4 events don’t just tell you what happened—they tell you the details of how and where it happened. 

That’s where event parameters come in. Instead of using fixed categories like in Universal Analytics, GA4 allows you to attach customizable parameters to each event, which should give you more flexibility and better insights.

How GA4 Event Parameters Work

Every event in GA4 can include parameters that add context. Instead of just seeing that a user submitted a form, parameters can tell you:

• What type of form it was (newsletter signup vs. contact request)
• What page they were on when they filled it out
• Which campaign brought them there

This level of detail helps businesses make smarter decisions about what’s working and what needs improvement.

Default vs. Custom Event Parameters

GA4 provides two types of event parameters:

1. Default Parameters (Automatically Collected)

GA4 automatically tracks several parameters with every event. These include:

• event_name – The name of the action (e.g., click, purchase).
• page_location – The URL where the event happened.
• session_id – The unique session associated with the event.
• engagement_time_msec – How long the user actively engaged with the page.

For example, if a user scrolls to the bottom of a page, GA4 tracks a scroll event and records the page URL where it occurred.

2. Custom Parameters (Manually Defined)

If the default parameters don’t provide enough insight, GA4 gives you the option to create your own parameters. These can track more specific interactions, such as:

• button_text – The exact text of a clicked button (e.g., “Subscribe Now” vs. “Sign Up”).
• video_duration – The length of a watched video.
• cart_value – The total value of items added to the cart.

For instance, if you’re running an A/B test with two different call-to-action buttons, tracking button_text as a parameter can show you which variation leads to more conversions.

Pro Tip: Track parameters that answer real business questions. Instead of logging every button click, focus on details like which CTA converts best or which pages drive the most sign-ups. More data isn’t always better—actionable insights are.

How to View Event Parameters in GA4 Reports

Once event parameters are tracked, you can analyze them inside GA4:

1. Go to GA4 > Reports > Engagement > Events
2. Click on a specific event to see associated parameters.
3. Use Explore > Free Form Reports to break down event data by parameter values.

If you’re using custom parameters, you’ll need to register them as custom dimensions in GA4’s settings before they appear in reports.

Conversions & Event Tracking

GA4 doesn’t just track conversions—it helps businesses refine what success actually looks like. Unlike Universal Analytics, where conversions were tied to rigid goal tracking, GA4 allows businesses to define their own key interactions.

For some, a conversion might be a direct purchase, while for others, it could be an in-depth content engagement or a demo request that leads to a high-value sale. 

The ability to track micro and macro conversions makes GA4 an essential tool for understanding not just who converts, but how they get there.

How GA4 Defines Conversions

In GA4, a conversion is any event that represents a key action on your website or app. Instead of setting up predefined goals, GA4 lets you mark any event as a conversion.

For example:

• A purchase (purchase) in an eCommerce store
• A form submission (form_submission) on a lead generation site
• A subscription sign-up (sign_up) for a SaaS platform

Since conversions in GA4 are event-based, you have more control over what gets tracked as a meaningful user action.

How to Set Up a Conversion in GA4

GA4 makes conversion tracking straightforward. If an event is already being tracked, you can turn it into a conversion in just a few clicks:

1. Go to GA4 > Admin > Events
2. Find the event you want to track as a conversion (e.g., purchase, form_submission)
3. Toggle “Mark as Conversion”

That’s it—GA4 will now count that event as a conversion, and the data will be available in the Conversions Report after processing.

For custom events that aren’t tracked by default (e.g., cta_click for key button interactions), you’ll first need to set up the event in GA4 or Google Tag Manager before marking it as a conversion.

Key Events That Should Be Marked as Conversions

Not all events need to be conversions. The best events to track as conversions are those that directly impact business goals.

For eCommerce:

• purchase – A completed transaction
• add_to_cart – Users adding items to their cart
• begin_checkout – Users starting the checkout process

For Lead Generation:

• form_submission – A user submits a lead form
• contact_request – A request for more information
• phone_call – A click-to-call action

For SaaS & Subscriptions:

• sign_up – A user creates an account
• start_trial – A user begins a free trial
• subscription_renew – A recurring payment is processed

By marking high-value actions as conversions, you ensure GA4 reports focus on the metrics that truly matter.

Where to View Conversion Data in GA4

Once conversions are set up, you can track them in GA4’s reports:

1. Go to Reports > Engagement > Conversions
2. View total conversions, event counts, and performance trends
3. Use Explore > Free Form to segment conversion data by traffic source, user type, or device

Debugging and Testing Events in GA4

Setting up event tracking is one thing—making sure the data is accurate is another. 

If an event isn’t firing correctly, missing parameters, or showing up twice, your reports won’t be reliable. That’s why testing events before relying on them is critical.

Use DebugView to Check Event Tracking

GA4’s DebugView allows real-time event monitoring. 

Go to GA4 > Admin > DebugView, then perform the action you’re tracking—clicking a button, submitting a form, or completing a purchase. 

If the event appears with the right parameters, it’s working. If not, check if GA4 is installed correctly and whether the event is set up in Google Tag Manager (GTM) or GA4’s event settings.

Best Practices for Event Tracking in GA4

GA4 offers powerful event tracking, but poor implementation leads to cluttered reports, misleading data, and missed insights. 

To track the right events efficiently, avoid common pitfalls and follow these expert strategies.

1. Don’t Track Everything—Prioritize Business-Critical Events

Tracking too many events creates data overload without actionable insights. Instead of logging every minor click, focus on events that contribute to conversions, retention, or engagement.

Example:

• Track add_to_cart, begin_checkout, and purchase to analyze eCommerce conversion drop-offs.
• Ignore generic button_click events unless they serve a clear goal (e.g., “Sign Up” clicks).

2. Structure Event Names and Parameters for Long-Term Scalability

GA4 has an event name limit (500 unique events per property). Instead of creating separate events for every variation, use parameters to differentiate actions.

Bad example:

• signup_click_mobile
• signup_click_desktop
• signup_click_pricing_page

Good example:

• Event: signup_click
• Parameters: device_category: mobile/desktop, page_location: pricing/about

3. Use Event Funnels and Multi-Step Tracking to Identify Drop-Offs

Tracking a single event doesn’t tell the whole story. Instead of focusing on isolated actions, build event funnels to track user progression across key touchpoints.

Example:
For a SaaS signup flow:

1. landing_page_view
2. pricing_page_view
3. signup_start
4. signup_complete

If users drop off between step 3 and 4, it signals an issue with the sign-up process—perhaps form friction, unclear messaging, or trust concerns.

Use Funnel Exploration reports in GA4 to analyze these stages and optimize weak points in the conversion journey.

Final Thoughts

Tracking events in GA4 is essential for understanding user behavior, optimizing marketing strategies, and proving ROI. However, navigating GA4’s reporting tools can be challenging, especially when analyzing multiple events and user interactions across different touchpoints.

If you want to simplify event tracking and visualization, consider using Databox’s GA4 integration. With pre-built GA4 dashboards, you can monitor key events, analyze trends, and track conversions in real-time without spending hours navigating GA4’s complex reports. You can also create custom reports tailored to your business needs, integrating GA4 data with other marketing and sales metrics for a complete performance overview.

Explore Databox’s GA4 templates to get started quickly and make your event tracking more actionable.

The post Events Report in Google Analytics 4 — The Complete Guide appeared first on Databox.

You should understand what’s bringing people in, what’s driving them away, and—most importantly—how to get them to stay and convert

So, what metrics should you actually pay attention to? And how can you leverage those insights to consistently bring in new customers?

That’s what we set out to discover in our latest Databox survey. We partnered up with Analytics That Profit, Business Builders, and other partners and surveyed 100+ companies to see if and how companies leverage their website analytics to improve their marketing and sales performance.

We also had a DBUG session where dozens of professionals gathered to discuss these survey insights. The live session featured four experts and delivered numerous insights that we will also cover. 

Here’s what we learned:

• Key Website Analytics Trends among Marketers: Insights on Usage, Satisfaction, and Impact
• Google Search Console and Google Analytics 4 Benchmarks
• Success Stories: How GA4 and Search Console Improved Marketing and Sales
• 6 Tactics to Improve Future Marketing and Sales Campaigns Using GA4 and GSC
• Get the Most Out of Your Google Analytics 4 and Google Search Console Data with Databox

Key Website Analytics Trends among Marketers: Insights on Usage, Satisfaction, and Impact

Let’s first start with the who – most respondents we talked to work in companies with 50 employees or fewer. It seems like small to mid-sized teams are the ones who are increasingly using analytics to compete.

We also found that 94.29% of surveyed companies are currently using Google Analytics 4 (GA4) to track user interactions and website performance.

For many, GA4 has become indispensable and it’s still the go-to tool for businesses that want comprehensive user insights and conversion tracking.

In addition, 93.33% of respondents use Google Search Console to gain insights into how users find their websites through online searches. With Search Console, these marketers can actively analyze how keywords and search behaviors drive visitors to their sites.

Marco Giordano, one of our DBUG experts, shared a strategy to maximize the power of these tools:

“I recommend for both data sources to use a BigQuery connector because you get much more data, especially with Search Console. Google likes to hide some of your data, and BigQuery just gives you more.”

Regular analysis is also essential for these companies. Most respondents review GA4 and Search Console data at least on a weekly basis to stay on top of website performance and understand user behavior.

Furthermore, 77.14% of respondents are using ‘Custom Events’ and ‘Conversions’ inside GA4.

This advanced feature helps them closely track specific user actions and personalize marketing activities to meet specific engagement goals.

In our DBUG session, Phil Wiseman of Analytics That Profit talked about the importance of this advanced feature, noting that while his organization finds it essential, many others have yet to catch up:

“80 percent of businesses they work with don’t have custom events or ROI measurements, which often creates baseless numbers rather than meaningful metrics.”

Phil Wiseman

Founder at Analytics That Profit

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Another key insight is that 69.52% of surveyed companies believe assigning a monetary value to conversions in GA4 has helped them measure the direct impact of online efforts on revenue.

By assigning these values, marketers can link website interactions to revenue outcomes.

Finally, we found that the average satisfaction rating for the combined capabilities of GA4 and Search Console stands at 7 out of 10.

This suggests that while these tools help with marketing and sales, they don’t quite deliver everything marketers need.

Google Search Console and Google Analytics 4 Benchmarks

Our survey results are connected to the Google Search Console and Google Analytics 4 Benchmark Group, which provides performance data from a broad sample of ~8,000 companies.

This benchmark data shows you how companies across different industries are performing, so you see where your own metrics stand compared to others.

In October 2024, benchmark data showed a median of 1.22K clicks across 2,920 contributors.

However, top-performing companies reached a median of 5.6K clicks, which shows how big of a difference in user engagement high-performing sites can achieve.

Conversions show an even more striking contrast. Median conversions in October stood at 232 across 5,559 contributors, but companies in the top quartile had a median of 1.71K conversions—7x higher.

If you’re using GA4 or GSC, we invite you to join our exclusive benchmark group – Google Search Console and GA4 Performance Benchmarks.

Once you join, you’ll be able to anonymously compare your website’s performance against thousands of other companies—at no cost.

Simply connect your account to the group (it’s 100% anonymous) and start getting insights that can help you optimize your strategy.

Not using these specific tools? You can still explore our Benchmark Groups tool and find cohorts that match your industry and goals.

Success Stories: How GA4 and Search Console Improved Marketing and Sales

GA4 and Search Console don’t just provide data – they drive strategy.

Here’s how top brands are turning these insights into measurable wins:

• Leveraging Cornerstone Content for Traffic Fluctuations
• Using Keyword Insights to Optimize Blog Content
• Optimizing Landing Pages with GA4 Conversion Tracking
• Fine-Tuning Landing Pages to Match Search Intent
• Using GA4’s Advanced AI Metrics to Predict Who Might Make a Purchase
• Tracking KPIs to Get Actionable Insights with GA4 and Google Search Console
• Enhancing Content Strategy with GA4 and Search Console Integration

Leveraging Cornerstone Content for Traffic Fluctuations

Cornerstone content is the high-value pages on your site—product pages, key service guides, and long-form articles—that directly drive customer conversions and revenue.

Instead of chasing every traffic fluctuation, focusing on cornerstone content helps brands zero in on what truly impacts the bottom line.

Matt Edens of Knowmad Digital Marketing explains how they use cornerstone content to “avoid reactionary responses to shifting traffic trends. With GA4 and GSC integrated through Screaming Frog, we monitor the performance of high-value URLs that drive commercial and transactional traffic, ensuring our efforts are tied to client business goals.”

“For instance, following Google’s March 2024 Core & Spam Updates, a waterproofing client in North Carolina experienced a 40% drop in new users quarter-over-quarter. By analyzing cornerstone content, we found that while overall traffic decreased, impressions and clicks to key commercial pages had actually doubled.

This insight reassured our client that high-value traffic remained strong, even as informational page traffic dropped. This approach underscores our shift away from prioritizing high-volume informational content and toward content that builds topical authority and directly engages target audiences.”

Using Keyword Insights to Optimize Blog Content

Google Search Console (GSC) provides insights into which keywords are leading people to your site, so you can get a direct view into what topics and terms are resonating with your audience.

You can then combine this data with tools like Semrush to find keyword gaps, new content opportunities, and make tweaks to existing blogs.

While this process often involves some trial and error, markers use it to refine their content based on real search data.

Adam Bockler of ONEFIRE explained how they use GSC to “track keywords people are searching to find our clients’ sites. Then I’ll use that in combination with Semrush to improve a blog post using that information. But it’s a bit of a guessing game, if I’m being honest.”

For Sonika Mehta of Zonka Feedback, integrating GA4 with GSC added another layer of insight.

They examined keyword-driven traffic and behavioral data together to find high-performing keywords they can direct to surveys and feedback tools, which led to a 40% increase in website visits.

Here’s what they shared:

“Integrating Google Analytics 4 (GA4) with Google Search Console has greatly enhanced Zonka Feedback’s digital marketing strategy. By leveraging insights from both platforms, we identified high-performing keywords that drove organic traffic to our surveys and feedback tools. This optimization led to a 40% increase in website visits and a 25% improvement in conversion rates.”

John Reinesch of Exponential Growth also shared how, with these two tools, they are able to “get a good picture of which keywords are driving the most organic traffic and which pieces of content are driving the most conversions. We used this integration with our own website and were able to reallocate some of our marketing budget towards content creation since we were able to determine our blog was our biggest source of new leads.”

PRO TIP: Want to stay on top of your blog’s performance in real-time, without having to sift through mountains of data from GA4 and GSC? Download our free Blog Performance Tracking Dashboard where you can directly track metrics like page views, blog engagement, CTR, and more.

Optimizing Landing Pages with GA4 Conversion Tracking

Conversion tracking captures key actions visitors take on your site, like filling out forms, making purchases, or clicking on contact links. These actions reveal where your high-value interactions are happening and which pages and tactics are actually driving engagement.

What’s more, GA4 conversion tracking doesn’t just show you where users are landing, but also how those pages support—or hinder—their journey toward conversion.

Marketers can find top landing pages and track conversion rates on those pages to quickly see where there’s potential to turn more visitors into leads or customers.

Marcie Lord of Digital Dynamo LLC shared their process:

“If you want to use GA4 to improve customer acquisition, you must have conversion tracking set up. This is a non-negotiable. At a minimum, you need to have conversion tags set up that track website engagement that’s most important to your business – examples include form fills, product purchases, and clicks on the phone number.

One of the obvious ways where you can use GA4 data to improve customer acquisition is by examining the top landing pages on your website, and then looking at the conversion rate on those pages for the most important tracked engagements. If the top landing pages have a very low conversion rate, examine them to make sure: – do they have a clear call to action? – is the content designed to answer user questions? – is the content easy to read, or does it make the user read too much? – do all the elements on the page work, or is functionality broken?

Adding more prominent, easy to access calls to action has been one way we’ve improved conversions for top landing pages. Instead of burying the conversion opportunity, we make it the first thing users see when they hit the page. This tactic has doubled conversion rates for many of our clients.”

Fine-Tuning Landing Pages to Match Search Intent

Disconnect between user intent and page content leads to high bounce rates and missed conversion opportunities.

You need to examine which search terms bring visitors to specific landing pages, so you can properly assess whether the page content aligns with the user’s expectations.

If users frequently bounce from a particular page, it could be a signal that the content doesn’t address what they’re looking for.

Avinash Chandra of BrandLoom Consulting shared how their team helped a client with this issue:

“For one e-commerce client, I noticed users landing from specific branded searches were bouncing right off. Why? The landing pages weren’t aligned with the searcher’s intent. We made a quick fix—optimizing the landing pages to match user expectations. The bounce rate dropped by 15%, and average session duration increased by 22%.”

PRO TIP: Are you running Google Ads and want to stay on top of your landing page performance, but struggle with their confusing reports? Here’s a Google Ads Dashboard Template where you can monitor key performance indicators like impressions, CPM, conversions, CPL, and more.

Using GA4’s Advanced AI Metrics to Predict Who Might Make a Purchase

For marketers, GA4’s advanced AI metrics provide a whole new way to connect with customers at just the right moment.

Google Analytics can now analyze past behavior to predict whether someone is likely to buy or might drop off, so companies can prioritize those who may be ready to make a decision.

Khunshan Ahmad of EvolveDash says that his team “uses this data to target the customers who are likely to purchase in the next few days based on past behavior.”

Tracking KPIs to Get Actionable Insights with GA4 and Google Search Console

Tracking KPIs with GA4 and GSC is one of the best ways to see how visitors arrive on your site and what they do once they get there.

You can get KPIs that provide a snapshot of site health and traffic sources—such as increases in direct or organic traffic—and how well specific keywords are performing.

For instance, if a blog post or landing page experiences higher-than-average traffic, you can use this data to create more content or social media promotions on similar topics.

Kameshia Ingram of BrandExtract shares their approach to leveraging KPIs:

“At our company, we like to leverage KPIs when looking at the data coming to our site with GA4 and Google Search Console. We like to see where people are coming from.

• Are we seeing an increase in direct traffic or organic traffic?
• If there is an increase in organic traffic, what keywords are driving the most clicks and what is our average position on SERPs?
• How they used the site once they get there?
• Are they filling out form submissions?
• Are they viewing a particular page more than some of our other pages?

By looking at this data and presenting it to the client or the team, we might suggest ways we can capitalize on the increase of traffic. We might suggest posting about that particular subject on socials, making sure our SEO tactics align with this strategy.”

During our DBUG session, Craig Hall said that “when you’re talking to CEOs and founders, they start to nod off when you’re talking web metrics…they want to know how it ties to revenue.”

PRO TIP: If you use HubSpot alongside Google Analytics 4, then you already know how time-consuming and tedious it can be to extract insights from the tools. But there’s an easier way to do it with our free Marketing Overview Dashboard Template (HubSpot & Google Analytics 4). Connect your most important insights from these two tools into one dashboard for actionable insights at your fingertips.

Enhancing Content Strategy with GA4 and Search Console Integration

These two tools also open up opportunities to refine your content strategy based on actual search behaviors and traffic patterns.

You can combine GA4’s page traffic insights with Search Console’s search query data, to identify keyword gaps and understand which terms have untapped potential to bring more visitors to their site.

One tactic is to focus on non-branded keywords that may have high search volume but aren’t yet driving significant traffic. These keywords often represent topics or questions that prospective customers are searching for, but where the site lacks sufficient or optimized content.

Lindsay Moura of SilverTech shared her strategy:

“One specific instance where the integration of GA4 and Google Search Console made a notable impact was when we analyzed GA4 page traffic data alongside Search Console search query data, we identified key opportunities to optimize their content strategy. We focused on non-branded search queries that were driving little to no traffic but had decent volume potential.

This led us to uncover a list of relevant keywords that were underutilized on their site. By creating new blog posts and optimizing existing content around these keywords, we significantly increased their organic search visibility and traffic to their website.”

Neil Shapiro, another expert from the DBUG session, advised that:

“You cannot analyze every single page. You must analyze groups. You should find groups based on some conditions, namely events, financial metrics, if available, and traffic, to define how to split these pages into groups.”

Neil Shapiro

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6 Tactics to Improve Future Marketing and Sales Campaigns Using GA4 and GSC

So, what’s next for our respondents?

Based on their insights, here’s a look at how they plan to continue using these two tools in the future to further optimize their campaigns:

• Using GSC and Screaming Frog to Focus on High-Impact Pages
• GA4’s Predictive Metrics to Personalize Campaigns for Higher Conversions
• Building Topic Clusters with AI-Powered Search Query Analysis
• Tracking Engagement with Scroll Depth and Google Looker Studio Dashboards
• Leveraging Search Intent Trends to Expand Multilingual Content and Social Promotion
• Using GA4 Event Tracking to Boost Customer Acquisition with Meta Ads

Using GSC and Screaming Frog to Focus on High-Impact Pages

Focusing on the pages that truly impact sales can make all the difference between hitting your business goals and chasing vanity metrics.

One tactic that can be effective is to integrate GSC with Screaming Frog to zoom in on specific, high-impact web pages rather than looking at traffic in broad strokes. You get a granular view of page performance, so you can see how changes in traffic influence client outcomes.

Marketers can avoid the common pitfalls of aggregate traffic analysis, which often leads to knee-jerk reactions or unnecessary optimizations that don’t support the objectives.

Matt Edens of Knowmad Digital Marketing is one of our respondents who talked about this approach:

“Integrating GSC with Screaming Frog has been one of the most beneficial strategies we’ve used to optimize digital marketing campaigns for sales growth. This integration allows us to stay laser-focused on work on web pages that drive impact on client sites, helping businesses achieve targeted outcomes.

Prior to implementing this strategy, traffic was viewed through more of an aggregate lens, which can lead to erroneous insights and assumptions, broad or over-implementation efforts, and/or work that simply doesn’t help the client’s business. By keeping the data specific and granular, we know when shifting traffic behavior is truly a concern and when it’s an opportunity. This has been a huge aid in achieving exceptional organic search outcomes for our clients that go beyond simple vanity metrics.”

PRO TIP: Want an easier way to track which of your pages perform well and which search queries drive traffic to your website (among other things)? You can use our free Google Search Console Queries and Page Overview Dashboard Template to get your GSC data into a single dashboard for streamlined analysis.

GA4’s Predictive Metrics to Personalize Campaigns for Higher Conversions

With tools like purchase and churn probability, you can use GA4’s predictive metrics to pinpoint which users are most likely to convert and focus on those high-value segments.

To get started, set up predictive audiences in GA4 to zero in on people likely to take actions like making a purchase or interacting with your campaign.

You can use this data to personalize messaging, offers, or content for these users. For instance, if a certain group has a high chance of buying, you could offer them a limited-time discount or a special product recommendation.

Gary Hemming of ABC Finance says that “for future campaigns, I plan to leverage GA4’s predictive metrics to tailor content based on specific audience interests. With this data, we’ll segment campaigns to create personalized follow-up interactions that strengthen engagement and drive higher conversion rates.”

Khunshan Ahmad of EvolveDash also talked about how they plan to use “revenue prediction feature of GA4 to help us get better at inventory management. This data will be useful in identifying peak customer engagement. Therefore, we will be able to increase the stock when customers are likely to increase their shopping habits. Similarly, we can either cut down on stock or create custom funnels when the activity is low.”

Building Topic Clusters with AI-Powered Search Query Analysis

Marketers can use the AI feature to analyze search queries and find the different ways people phrase similar searches. You can then build topic clusters based on this data to cover a central subject more comprehensively.

With AI-driven query analysis, marketers can see more than just individual keywords to map out the broader context of user intent.

Phil Wiseman of Analytics That Profit shares how they “use AI to analyze search queries to explore different ways people search for the same information. This approach allows you to build topic cluster easily.”

Tracking Engagement with Scroll Depth and Google Looker Studio Dashboards

To understand how users engage with blog content, you need to track more than just page views.

In GA4, scroll depth tracking offers a great way to measure how far users are scrolling through an article, so you can see which sections hold attention and where readers might drop off.

Using Google Looker Studio to visualize Google Search Console data can take this analysis further.

Looker Studio dashboards help marketers represent GSC data in a clear, visually engaging format, so it’s easier to spot trends and analyze performance across different pages and keywords.

Ruslan Konygin of Triodox explains that for “blog content analysis, you can configure GA4 to track scroll depth—analyzing how deeply (in percentage) users are scrolling through each article, how many read the article to the end, and how many click the link to the contact page. For Google Search Console, I recommend using dashboards in Google Looker Studio to better represent Search Console data.”

Leveraging Search Intent Trends to Expand Multilingual Content and Social Promotion

Are you crafting content that fits language preferences?

This is one tactic that some of our respondents plan to use to connect with new audience segments and strengthen their presence in different markets.

To make this work, content and marketing teams need to team up. Content teams can focus on creating high-quality blog posts in the chosen languages, while marketing can increase the reach by promoting it on social media channels tailored to each language group.

This way, language-specific content doesn’t just match search trends—it also finds the right audience on the platforms they use most.

Simon Bacher of Ling says that “if we see a trend in search intent for specific languages, our content team will produce more blog content on that topic and our marketing team will promote these languages across socials.”

Colton De Vos of Resolute Technology Solution also talked about this tactic:

“By regularly reviewing Google Search Console data for which search terms are driving traffic and cross-comparing that against geographic traffic, our team has been able to tweak how certain pages rank in countries.

We were able to identify several pages that were driving lots of international web traffic but few local leads and take measures to rank these pages better locally – Google Maps insertions, more local backlinks, and aligning keyword focus to what terms people are using in our area.”

Using GA4 Event Tracking to Boost Customer Acquisition with Meta Ads

GA4’s event-based tracking gives marketers deep insights into what users are doing—product views, form submissions, and cart abandonment.

If you monitor these interactions, you can group audiences based on specific actions and use the data to create more relevant Meta Ads campaigns.

For example, users who leave items in their cart could see retargeting ads with a discount to nudge them to finish their purchase.

Ronald Dsouza of Fit You Today went into detail on this tactic and shared his specific plan:

“I’m leveraging GA4 to drive customer acquisition through Meta Ads. I’ve set up event-based tracking in GA4 to monitor key actions on my website, like product views and form submissions. This data helps me create custom audiences based on user behavior, which I then use for targeted retargeting campaigns on Meta Ads.

I also use GA4’s insights to build lookalike audiences, targeting potential new customers who share characteristics with my most valuable existing customers. This has helped me increase my reach while maintaining relevance, leading to better conversion rates.”

PRO TIP: Do you run ads on Facebook and have trouble making sense of their confusing reporting interface? Use our free Facebook Ads Campaign Performance Dashboard Template instead, where you can connect your data in one easy-to-understand dashboard. Track everything from amount spend to conversion rates by creative in one comprehensive screen.

Get the Most Out of Your Google Analytics 4 and Google Search Console Data with Databox

Turning your website into a customer acquisition powerhouse starts with understanding what drives engagement—and what doesn’t.

Sure, it’s easy to gather traffic numbers, bounce rates, and session times, but without context, those metrics don’t reveal much about how effectively you’re attracting potential customers.

This is where Databox comes in to make more sense of your GA4 and GSC data.

Our Benchmark Groups give you direct insight into how other businesses are performing on similar metrics, so you can see where you’re ahead, where there’s room to improve, and what’s working best for others in your industry. You’ll get real-time insights into whether your organic traffic is on par with industry leaders.

And it doesn’t stop there. There’s also Databox Dashboards, where you can bring all of your essential GA4 and GSC data together in one place, making it easy to track, visualize, and act on it.

From acquisition metrics like traffic sources and click-through rates to deeper insights into user behavior, every detail is right at your fingertips.

You can quickly connect your data sources (we support 130+ integrations), select key metrics, and generate visual reports that make the data actionable.

Plus, by linking your Benchmark Group data directly to your dashboards, you gain a real-time comparison view without any extra setup—you can identify patterns, spot gaps, and refine your strategies with precision.

Sign up for a free Databox trial today and start making more sense of your GA4 and GSC data – without any complex setups, spreadsheet headaches, and manual reporting.

The post How to Leverage Your Website Analytics to Acquire New Customers? [Research Findings Based on 100+ Companies] appeared first on Databox.

Despite businesses investing heavily in customer acquisition and optimizing user experience, cart abandonments are still a major issue. And for every abandoned cart, potential revenue slips through the cracks.

But what exactly causes shoppers to abandon their carts? Is it the unexpected shipping costs, a complicated checkout process, or something else entirely? And more importantly, what can you do to turn those abandoned carts into completed purchases?

To find the root causes and potential solutions, we surveyed 69 experts who are successfully lowering cart abandonment. Together, we explored the top reasons why customers walk away from their carts and the steps businesses can take to reduce abandonment rates.

Let’s dive in and see what the experts had to say:

• Who Did We Survey
• General Ecommerce Performance Benchmarks
• Top Reasons Behind Shopping Cart Abandonment
• How to Reduce Cart Abandonment
• Using Feedback from Abandoned Carts to Improve Ecommerce Strategy
• Stay on Top of Your Ecommerce Metrics and KPIs with Databox

Who Did We Survey

For this report, Databox and our partners talked to 69 companies to explore what makes digital buyers leave their shopping carts and how ecommerce companies can fix it.

When it comes to the type of ecommerce businesses we talked to, 33.33% of the respondents are B2C (Business-to-Consumer), 33.33% are B2B (Business-to-Business), and 21.74% are agencies or consultants working for eCommerce.

Most surveyed companies we talked to have up to 50 employees.

General Ecommerce Performance Benchmarks

The survey we ran is connected to the Benchmark Group General Ecommerce Performance Benchmarks.

Companies that join the group can compare their ecommerce performance against similar businesses and get real-time insights into relevant KPIs and metrics. The group has more than 600 members and shows metric values from Shopify and Google Analytics.

According to the collected data, there were 94.5 abandoned checkouts on August 24 (median, 182 contributors).

If you also run an ecommerce business, we want to invite you to join our exclusive benchmark group called General Ecommerce Performance Benchmarks.

Once you join, you can anonymously compare your performance with other ecommerce companies, for zero cost. All you need to do is connect your account to the group (100% anonymous).

Even if you run another type of business, you can still scroll through Benchmark Groups to find the ones most relevant for you.

Top Reasons Behind Shopping Cart Abandonment

From a confusing checkout system to hidden fees, there’s no shortage of reasons that may lead to shopping cart abandonment.

But according to our survey, unexpected shipping costs are the most common reason why digital buyers abandon their shopping carts.

We talked to our respondents in detail about some of these most common causes, so let’s check out what they had to say:

• Unexpected Shipping Cost
• Poor Website Performance
• Complex Checkout Process
• Buyer Cold Feet
• Lack of Trust on Third-Party Platforms

Unexpected Shipping Cost

When customers get to checkout and see shipping fees they weren’t expecting, it can cause frustration and make them rethink the purchase. It often feels like a surprise charge, which leads them to drop out of the process.

To avoid this, the best practice is to be upfront about shipping costs—either offering free shipping or clearly showing the fees early on. When customers know the full price from the start, they’re much more likely to follow through with their purchase.

Omar Dalberry of 5 Kings Marketing explains that “most shoppers are now hoping and expecting free shipping. So, if shipping costs are not clear and the shipping time is lengthy, then usually buyers look elsewhere online for a better deal. Free shipping should be promoted upfront. This increases shopping cart conversions tremendously and allows for proper retargeting campaigns.”

James Hook of Neurogan Health says that “we live in the age of Amazon, which has normalized purchasing with no extra costs.”

“Even a simple addition of $2.99 for delivery could now turn away a consumer who is within seconds of purchasing. It’s just the way of the world now, and people want to know what their true cost is upfront or they will feel betrayed and quickly look elsewhere (or will even try to find out if your product is on Amazon without any extra fees). You are far stronger sucking those costs into the charge you give at the start and making sure you have covered what you need to. The consumer is far more likely to accept this than sudden charges on a payment page.”

Poor Website Performance

Slow-loading pages, unresponsive buttons, and lag during checkout can all lead to customer frustration.

With modern online shopping, people expect everything to run smoothly – and if it doesn’t, they’re likely to move on to the next business.

Businesses should focus on speeding up their site, making it mobile-friendly, and keeping the checkout process quick and seamless as possible.

Ashwini Dave of Middleware agrees that “high shopping cart abandonment rates can often be attributed to poor site performance, such as slow loading times.”

“When a website takes too long to load, potential customers are likely to leave out of frustration, leading to lost sales. One effective solution is to utilize monitoring tools to continuously track and analyze your site’s performance. These tools allow you to monitor real-time site speed, detect issues like large image files or inefficient code, and offer actionable recommendations to optimize performance.”

Complex Checkout Process

When customers have to go through too many steps, fill out too many forms, or can’t check out as a guest, they often get frustrated and bail.

The more complicated it is, the less likely they are to finish their purchase. To fix this, businesses should make the checkout process as simple as possible—fewer steps, an option for guest checkout, and using autofill.

Colt Agar of Red Stag Fulfillment shares that:

“As someone who ran, managed, and helped optimize hundreds of eCommerce websites, I noticed that the checkout process is the primary reason why customers abandon their carts when shopping online. Whenever a buyer faces a challenging, annoying, difficult checkout process that requires them to, for example, sign up and create an account or use only specific payment methods, they tend to lose interest and move on without ever completing the purchase.”

Colt Agar

Head of SEO at Red Stag Fulfillment

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C Shakhawat Sultan of WPFunnels also says that “the most common reason for cart abandonment is distraction during the checkout process.”

“We’ve seen sites that are busy including product suggestions, collecting too much information, displaying Ads, etc., on the checkout page. I think these are very distracting and easily sway the customer away from completing the purchase. Sure, some attempt to increase AOV, maybe using a quick order bump offer, is fine. But the goal here should really be to ensure the customer completes the order.”

PRO TIP: Want an easier way to track your Shopify store’s sales and performance? Check out our Shopify Store Overview Dashboard to get an at-glance overview of your most relevant metrics, all in one place and in real-time.

Buyer Cold Feet

As customers approach the final stages of checkout, they may begin to second-guess their decision —whether it’s about the price, if they really need the product, or if it’s worth it.

This hesitation often leads them to abandon the purchase. To stop this from happening, businesses can offer things like discounts or free returns to give buyers that extra push.

Matt Aird of Custom Neon shared that one of the “primary reasons for cart abandonment on our site have been buyer cold feet. Higher-value items often cause prospects to leave the purchase page to check for reviews, compare prices, or verify their cart items. Any deviation from the purchase page can be problematic for an eCommerce business, as it increases the likelihood of abandonment.”

Lack of Trust in Third-Party Platforms

If customers don’t feel safe buying from a site they don’t know well, they might worry about security, payment issues, or privacy concerns.

It can be especially concerning if the customers can’t find many positive reviews and updates on other platforms like the brand’s Facebook, Instagram, or even Google reviews.

AJ Saunders of Audacious Commerce says that this “lack of trust on third-party platforms can significantly impact cart abandonment rates. For example, having a Facebook page that hasn’t been updated for 3 years or bad reviews on their Google Business profile that haven’t been answered.”

How to Reduce Cart Abandonment

According to our respondents, free shipping and simplified checkout are the most efficient in solving the problem of an abandoned shopping cart.

To reduce your cart abandonment, you need to understand the most common barriers and create targeted strategies to mitigate them.

Below, we’ll go over some of the most effective ways our respondents used to reduce cart abandonment:

• Disclose Shipping Costs Early in the Shopping Process
• Create a Dynamic CTA Button
• Optimize Site Speed
• Add Live Chat with Real Agents
• Simplify the Checkout Process
• Implement a Coupon Referral Program

Disclose Shipping Costs Early in the Shopping Process

Letting customers know the shipping costs early is key to cutting down on cart abandonment. When unexpected fees pop up at checkout, it throws off their buying decision.

That’s why it’s always a better idea for businesses to disclose shipping fees on product pages or early in the process.

Muhammed Ilyasy of Acowebs says that they “implemented a progressive disclosure of shipping costs by showing estimated shipping fees earlier in the shopping process. This change made costs more transparent and led to a 15% reduction in cart abandonment, as customers had clearer expectations of total prices.”

Create a Dynamic CTA Button

A well-designed, attention-grabbing CTA button, with clear, action-oriented text, can encourage hesitant buyers to proceed with the purchase.

Businesses should ensure that the button stands out visually, is mobile-friendly, and includes persuasive language that’s in line with the buyer’s intent, such as “Complete Purchase” or “Checkout Now.”

You can also integrate the button with popular payment options based on the customer’s purchase history and preference.

Here’s how Sajad Entesari of Republic Marketing leverages dynamic CTA buttons:

“For our clients using Shopify, we made a significant improvement by adding a Dynamic CTA button. This button integrates with Google Pay, Apple Pay, and Shop Payments based on the user’s preference and previous purchase history.

After implementing this change, abandoned checkouts for a supplement brand decreased by 20% within 2 weeks. Additionally, by improving the communication of shipping and return policies on the product page, we further reduced cart abandonment by 10%.”

Optimize Site Speed

Customers get frustrated easily when a website takes too long to load – so make sure your site runs fast on both desktop and mobile devices.

Simple changes like compressing images, cutting down on redirects, and using faster servers can make a big difference in reducing abandoned carts.

Ian Feder of Elite CMO Services shared how “we did a bunch of Google site speed recommendations and nearly cut the load time in half and saw over 25% reduction in cart abandonment.”

PRO TIP: If you want to get a better overview of your most relevant website performance metrics, you can use our Website Engagement Overview Dashboard. You can track everything from traffic and lead demographics to website performance indicators.  

Add Live Chat with Real Agents

When buyers run into any issues or have questions at checkout, having access to agent chat in real-time can put their minds at ease and keep them moving forward.

Live chat makes customers feel supported and helps them solve problems quickly, so they’re more likely to finish their purchase instead of leaving.

AJ Saunders of Audacious Commerce says that “live chat with real agents will always help people during purchasing as they can provide advice and confirm the order has been placed.”

Simplify the Checkout Process

Long, complicated forms and multiple unnecessary steps in the checkout process can easily overwhelm customers.

The best way to avoid this is to reduce the number of steps, let people check out as guests, and use autofill for quicker entries.

Keenan Beavis of Longhouse Media shares that:

“While looking at a client’s Shopify performance, we noticed the abandonment rate stemmed mostly from a long checkout process. We removed some steps, and implemented a guest checkout process which has greatly increased the number of clients that follow through and purchase.”

Keenan Beavis

Founder at Longhouse Media

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Matt Aird of Custom Neon also shared their strategy for simplifying it via a one-step checkout process:

“One significant change we implemented was introducing a one-step checkout process. We streamlined the checkout process by minimizing the number of steps required to complete a purchase and simplifying the form fields.”

Implement a Coupon Referral Program

When you offer a discount for completing their purchase and referring a friend, it creates an extra nudge to finish the order. The best part is, the person they refer is more likely to trust your brand since it’s coming from someone they know.

Plus, customers love getting a quick reward—and when their friends get a deal too, it’s even more of an incentive.

Gary Gray of Coupon Chief says that “a lot changed the moment we implemented our Pay 2 Share program which incentivizes users to share coupons with others, earning them 2% of the purchase price when someone uses their shared coupon.”

“By offering users the chance to earn a percentage of the purchase price when someone else uses a coupon they shared, we created a more dynamic and engaging environment. Users were not only motivated to find and share coupons but also to complete their purchases on our site to maximize their earnings. This resulted in a decrease in cart abandonment as users were more incentivized to follow through with their transactions, knowing they could benefit financially from the Pay 2 Share program.”

Using Feedback from Abandoned Carts to Improve Ecommerce Strategy

Feedback from abandoned carts can give you some incredible insights into the pain points and obstacles customers face during the shopping process.

But what’s the best way to actually collect this feedback?

Here’s what our respondents recommend:

• Exit-Intent Surveys
• Follow-Up Emails with Surveys
• Use Customer Service Agents

Exit-Intent Surveys

Exit-intent surveys are a great way to get feedback from shoppers just as they’re about to leave your site without buying.

These pop up when customers are about to close the tab or leave the page, asking something simple like, “What stopped you from finishing your purchase?” It’s a quick and easy way to figure out what went wrong, whether it’s pricing or a frustrating checkout process.

The insights you get from these surveys can help you make changes to improve the shopping experience and cut down on cart abandonment going forward.

Dhawal Shah of 2Stallions also says that “to gather feedback from customers who abandon their carts, consider using Exit-Intent Surveys. These pop-ups appear when a customer is about to leave your site, prompting them to share why they’re leaving.”

Follow-Up Emails with Surveys

Follow-up emails are typically sent shortly after the abandonment, asking a few quick questions about what stopped them from buying.

You should include a brief survey with questions about their shopping experience—such as whether pricing, payment options, or shipping details were an issue—to help find specific barriers.

Matt Aird of Custom Neon says that “follow-up emails are sent within a few hours of abandonment, offering an incentive like a discount or free add-ons if they complete their purchase, along with a brief survey asking for their feedback.”

He explains that “analyzing this feedback has been invaluable. For instance, many users mentioned confusion over additional costs, a desire for more payment options, and the need for social proof. This led us to clarify add-on costs, such as hanging kits, earlier in the checkout process, introduce BNPL options, and list our reviews. All of which significantly improved our conversion rates. Additionally, the feedback helped us identify and remove friction points, further enhancing the customer experience.”

Colt Agar of Red Stag Fulfillment recommends that “you don’t want to make it lengthy—a simple, one-question poll asking about their hesitation to purchase will do. If the customer’s reason was related to an internal issue, take note of it and assess the frequency of those responses at the end of the quarter. If there are substantial complaints, then it’s worth improving that aspect of your system.”

Use Customer Service Agents

Whether through email, phone, or live chat, agents can ask customers if they have any problems—like issues with the product, the checkout process, or shipping.

This personal touch not only helps get valuable feedback but can also solve the problem right away, sometimes even saving the sale.

Stay on Top of Your Ecommerce Metrics and KPIs with Databox

Dealing with high shopping cart abandonment rates is a challenge nearly every eCommerce business faces – but as our experts have shown, there are clear steps you can take to address this issue.

From simplifying the checkout process to offering flexible payment options, the solutions are out there. But how will you know if the steps you’re taking are actually making a difference?

Well, that’s where Databox comes in.

With the General Ecommerce Performance Benchmarks Benchmark Group, you can anonymously compare your most important ecommerce metrics and KPIs to similar businesses – in real-time and in one instant view.

And once you sign up for a free trial account, you also get access to Databox Dashboards. You can build customizable dashboards in just minutes and keep all of your most relevant metrics and KPIs in one easy-to-monitor place.

Sign up for a free trial and take the guesswork out of your eCommerce strategies with Databox.

The post High Shopping Cart Abandonment Rate: Causes and Potential Solutions [Insights from 65+ Experts] appeared first on Databox.

Google Analytics metrics are essential for understanding your website’s performance and user behavior. If you used Universal Analytics (UA), you were familiar with its data tracking methods. But with the move to Google Analytics 4 (GA4), everything has changed. GA4 offers a new way to track data, providing deeper insights and more accurate analysis. Are you tracking the right metrics to make the most out of GA4?

Starting July 1, 2023, Google stopped processing data for standard UA properties. For 360 properties data processing and Universal Analytics access continued until July 1, 2024. Now, GA4 has fully taken over, and UA services and APIs are no longer available.

This shift means businesses need to adapt to GA4’s event-based tracking and new metrics. This guide will show you which metrics to track in GA4 and how they differ from those in UA. Each section will help you better understand how to adapt and make the most of GA4.

Ready to explore GA4’s metrics? Let’s dive in.

If you’re a marketer still adapting to GA4 and need guidance to understand how its metrics and approach differ from Universal Analytics, this guide will help you navigate the changes and make the most of GA4.

Let’s dive right in.

• Google Analytics Metrics and Dimensions vs GA4
• Types of Metrics in Google Analytics and GA4
• 11 Most Tracked Metrics in Google Analytics and GA4

Understanding Google Analytics 4 (GA4)

Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is the latest version of Google’s web analytics platform, designed to provide a more comprehensive and flexible approach to tracking user behavior across websites and apps. GA4 uses an event-based data model, which allows for more detailed and customizable tracking compared to the session-based model of Universal Analytics.

What Is a Metric in Google Analytics?

A metric in Google Analytics is a number that shows how well your website or app is doing. It helps you measure things like how many people visit your site, how long they stay, or how many take specific actions, like signing up for a newsletter. In GA4, metrics work with dimensions (which describe characteristics of your data, like where users came from or which device they used) to help you understand how visitors use your site and how well it’s performing. For a deeper understanding of how metrics and dimensions function together, you can refer to Google’s official guide on Dimensions and Metrics.

How Google Analytics Metrics Work for Web Analytics

Google Analytics metrics are numbers that show how visitors behave on a website or app. These numbers help you see different parts of how people interact with your site, like the average time they spend on pages, which indicates engagement levels and content effectiveness.

Web analytics is the process of collecting and looking at data to understand how visitors use a website. It helps businesses know what visitors do, see how well the site is working, and make changes to improve the user experience. Google Analytics is one of the most popular tools for web analytics. It gives important numbers (metrics) that help website owners and marketers understand how their site is doing.

GA metrics provide insights into various aspects of user interaction, such as:

• Traffic volume (e.g., Users, Sessions)
• Engagement (e.g., Average Session Duration, Pages per Session)
• Conversion (e.g., Conversion Rate, Goal Completions)
• Acquisition (e.g., Traffic Sources, Channels) – This one is especially important from our experience as it helps identify where your visitors are coming from, such as search engines, social media, or direct visits. This is crucial for understanding which marketing campaigns are driving the most traffic and engagement.

Metrics are calculated based on the data collected from user interactions, which are processed and aggregated by Google Analytics. The way data is collected directly influences the accuracy and depth of your reports.

Once you’re tracking the right GA4 metrics, the bigger challenge is interpreting how they relate to each other. For example, a drop in engagement rate alongside steady traffic can mean something very different than a drop tied to a specific channel or device. Teams now use AI data analysts, like Databox MCP, to ask plain-English questions about performance and get answers based on their real metrics, definitions, and historical data. This makes it easier to understand why changes happened and how different GA4 metrics connect to actual business outcomes.

Google Analytics Metrics and Dimensions vs GA4

Google Analytics 4 (GA4) differs significantly from Universal Analytics (UA) in terms of its focus and the way it processes and presents data.

Here are the key differences:

• UA revolves around sessions and pageviews as primary data points for analysis, while GA4 centers around tracking and processing events
• Metrics in GA4 have a single scope (Event), while dimensions can have two scopes (Event and User)

When you switch to GA4, you’ll also notice some new metrics are available, and some are missing, due to the new way the tool approaches data.

GA4 introduces new metrics like Engaged Session (counting sessions meeting specific criteria), Average Engagement Time per Session (measuring time spent on a specific page), and Engagement Rate (Engaged Sessions divided by total sessions), which were not available in UA.

At the same time, Bounce rate, which was prominent in Universal Analytics, is absent from GA4.

Expert Insight: If you find GA4’s interface confusing, you can streamline the way you track all these metrics with Databox. Check out our, customizable web analytics dashboard templates and start tracking website traffic, engagement, and more.

Types of Metrics in Google Analytics and GA4

GA4 metrics can be divided into two primary types: default and custom metrics.

Default metrics in Google Analytics 4 are those that you can use right away as they’re already set up. They include metric sub-categories like acquisition metrics, engagement metrics, and monetization metrics.

For example:

• New users, engaged sessions, and event count belong to the acquisition metrics category
• Users, views, and views per user represent engagement metrics
• Item views, add to carts, and purchase revenue are examples of monetization metrics

There are also custom metrics, which represent those set up by users who want to measure GA4 dimension attributes that aren’t already available.

For instance, “number of video views” if your website homepage includes a video.

PRO TIP: How to Monitor and Evaluate Your SEO Performance

If you want to understand how your visitors are behaving on your landing pages, there are several on-page events and metrics you can track from Google Analytics 4 and Google Search Console that will help:

• Organic clicks by queries. Which search queries generate the most clicks to your website?
• Organic clicks by page. Which pages receive the most clicks from search results pages?
• Organic sessions. How many organic search sessions does your website receive?
• Organic engaged sessions. How many website visitors were engaged with your content? An engaged session lasts longer than 10 seconds, has a conversion event, or has at least 2 pageviews or screenviews.
• Views per channel. Which channels generate the most views to your website?

And more…

Now you can benefit from the experience of our SEO and website conversion experts, who have put together a plug-and-play Databox template showing the most important metrics for monitoring your landing page performance. It’s simple to implement and start using as a standalone dashboard or in marketing reports!

You can easily set it up in just a few clicks – no coding required.

To set up the dashboard, follow these 3 simple steps:

Step 1: Get the template 

Step 2: Connect your Google Analytics 4 and Google Search Console accounts with Databox. 

Step 3: Watch your dashboard populate in seconds.

Try this template

11 Most Tracked Metrics in Google Analytics and GA4

If you’re about to switch to tracking Google Analytics 4 metrics to better understand your website performance, here are the key ones to add to your dashboard. To help you get a better picture of what you’ll find in GA4, we’ll also explain how the new metrics differ from the ones you used to track in Universal Analytics.

1. Users
2. Bounce Rate
3. Sessions
4. Average Session Duration
5. Percentage of New Sessions
6. Sessions by Channel
7. Pages Per Session
8. Event Count
9. Pageviews
10. Conversions
11. Engagement Rate

Users

In Google Analytics, this metric used to designate the number of unique website visitors. But what does “Users” metric measure in GA4, this metric has evolved and consists of three metrics:

• Total users: The total number of unique visitors to your website
• New users: The number of first-time visitors to your website, and 
• Active users: The number of website visitors with an engaged session or for which GA4 collects certain parameters

Now, let’s take a step back to understand what an engaged session means. An engaged session lasts at least 10 seconds, has at least one conversion event, or involves at least two page or screen views.

The alternative condition a user should meet to be considered an active user is for GA4 to collect the first_visit event or engagement_time_msec parameter.

You may notice a difference between the calculations of “Users” metrics in UA and GA4 since the definitions are not the same, but Google claims discrepancies up to 20% are expected.

Recommended Datablock

To track users in Databox, Weidert Group’s Jonathan Stanis recommends the Line Graph Datablock with comparisons turned on:

“This Datablock is very useful in letting us see if any particular piece of content caused a spike in traffic or other general trends,” Stanis says. “December always tends to be a slow month for us, particularly between Christmas and New Years, and the ‘Users’ line graph clearly shows this trend.”

Benchmark

According to Databox’s own Google Analytics 4 benchmark report, the median value of Active Users for SaaS & B2B companies is 2.51K (a month).

For B2C companies, the median value is higher – 4.76K.

Expert Insight: Tracking User metrics can be simple with Databox. Use this Google Analytics 4 Acquisition Overview dashboard template to see where your users are coming from, how many new visitors you have every day, how much revenue they’re generating, and more.

New vs. Returning Visitors is a metric that shows the ratio of new to returning visitors, indicating whether you are attracting the right kind of visitors and if previous customers are returning. This helps assess the effectiveness of your acquisition strategies and content appeal.

Bounce Rate

Bounce rate was a notable metric in Google Analytics available in the main dashboard, that measured the percentage of visitors who visited a page on your website without interacting with it. In this case, the session duration was zero seconds.

However, the definition of bounce rate changed in GA4. Now, the bounce rate is the percentage of sessions that were not engaged. As we mentioned above, that means the session lasted less than 10 seconds, the user didn’t trigger any events (didn’t convert), or they didn’t open any new pages or screens.

In Universal Analytics, the bounce rate reflected the percentage of sessions where users viewed only one page, potentially overlooking deeper engagement on single-page applications. In Google Analytics 4, bounce rate signifies the percentage of sessions that lacked engagement criteria, offering a more nuanced view of user interactions, especially for content-focused sites like blogs where brief visits might still count as engaged sessions.

Maybe the simplest way to explain Bounce rate in GA4 is to say that it’s the inverse of the engagement rate.

Recommended Datablock

To track the bounce rate in Databox, Avidly’s Elise Karlsen Bye recommends the Line Graph Datablock with comparisons turned on.

Expert Insight: Unhappy with your website’s bounce rate? Try using an exit-intent pop-up to promote a special discount, a last-minute offer, or ask your website visitors for feedback. These tactics may lead to a reduced bounce rate.

Sessions

Sessions in Google Analytics were defined as periods of time during which a user actively engages with your website. A session was considered completed after 30 minutes of inactivity, after midnight, or due to new campaign parameters.

In GA4, however, there are a few changes:

• The metric is also called Session Start
• A new session generates an ID, which makes it easier to track all events that happen in that session
• The session does not automatically end at midnight (giving you a more precise number of sessions to work with)

The new way of measuring sessions has different implications for many types of businesses, for example, for global ones, considering that users from different time zones will be visiting their websites and be more likely to cross the midnight threshold.

Recommended Datablock

To track sessions in Databox, PR 20/20’s Keith Moehring recommends the Line Chart Cumulative Datablock with comparison and goals turned on:

“I like to see the day-by-day progress of this metric, and it’s often one with which we associate goals,” Moehring says.

Benchmark

According to Databox’s own Benchmark data, the median value of sessions for B2B and SaaS companies is 2.82K (a month).

For B2C companies, the median value is 4.34K.

Expert Insight: You can track all your relevant Google Analytics 4 KPIs in one streamlined screen with this Databox GA4 KPI dashboard template. Monitor metrics such as Average Session Duration, Sessions, Sessions by Channel, and Session Conversion Rate, and quickly identify any emerging trends or bottlenecks in your website performance.

Average Session Duration

In Google Analytics, Average Session Duration used to measure the average length of a unique user’s visit on your website. You could calculate it by dividing the total session duration (in seconds) by the total number of sessions.

In GA4, the measurement of this metric, which kept the same name, is much more accurate. Before, UA used to measure the Avg. Session Duration in the same way for all sessions. It didn’t matter, for instance, if a user was running your webpage in the background.

Now, Avg. Session Duration uses the total duration of all engaged sessions to calculate the average session length, which gives you a more accurate idea on where you stand.

Recommended Datablock

To track average session duration in Databox, FCP Euro’s Amir Hamdi recommends the Audience Overview Datablock:

“As an e-commerce business, having all our website performance metrics available at a glance is critical,” Hamdi says. “The Audience Overview Datablock is the quickest way we can gauge site performance. As a bonus, I love being able to track metrics from Google Analytics and HubSpot in the same place.”

Expert Insight: The Average Session Duration benchmarks vary by industry, but if you’re looking to improve yours, consider improving your content format to make it more accessible and engaging. For example, you may add images or videos to your pages or simplifying and shortening your page copy to make it more digestible.

Percentage of New Sessions

New sessions are registered when there’s no client ID associated with a website visitor. The metrics “% New Sessions” refers to the total percentage of first-time sessions on your website during a specific time frame.

As Sessions are now measured differently (take a look at the explanation above), you may notice a difference in the number of new sessions in GA4—it may be lower because, for example, midnight doesn’t automatically end a session and start a new one.

Recommended Datablock

To track the percentage of new sessions in Databox, Imagine Business Development’s Doug Davidoff and Smartbug Media’s Juli Durante recommend the Line Graph Datablock with comparisons turned on:

“With the Line Graph Datablock, we’re able to quickly see how things are trending at any moment,” Davidoff says. “Depending on the strategy we’re implementing, we know if ‘% New Sessions’ is too high, then we’re not engaging enough visitors to come back. If it’s too low, we’re not attracting enough new visitors to the top of our funnel.”

“If you need to keep a database engaged long-term, seeing the line graph trend of repeat sessions is incredibly valuable,” Durante says.

“If you need to generate a ton of new leads, the graph will show you how your traffic may help you meet that expectation. If you’re unsure of whether or not existing customers are visiting your website and affecting your conversion rates, new sessions is another indicator of that.”

Sessions by Channel

UA used to define “Session by channel” as the number of sessions that can be attributed to different marketing channels. This allowed marketers to easily understand where most of their sessions are coming from: paid, organic, social, email, and other channels.

This metric is still available in GA4 in the Traffic Acquisition report. But, just like with other session-related metrics in Google Analytics 4, the number of sessions by channel may look different in GA4 due to the new way of measuring them.

Acquisition Channels represent the different channels that users use to find your website, such as organic search, paid search, social media, or direct traffic. This metric helps identify which marketing efforts are most effective in driving traffic to your site.

Recommended Datablock

To track sessions by channel in Databox, The Weidert Group’s Jonathan Stanis recommends the Pie Chart Datablock:

“This helps show where the largest audiences are coming from and what channels are struggling,” Stanis says.

Another great option is bubble visualization.

Pages Per Session

Google Analytics calculated “Pages Per Session” by dividing the total number of pageviews by the total number of sessions. These pageviews are necessarily unique, as the same user could view a single page five times and it would be counted as five pageviews.

This is another metric affected by how sessions are measured. In GA, it’s still available by default, although it’s called Views per Session.

Recommended Datablock

To track pages per session in Databox, Prism Global Marketing Solutions’ Elyse Flynn Meyer recommends the Line Graph Datablock with comparisons turned on:

“An increase in pages per session is often a clear indicator that your website visitors are more engaged and are looking to explore more of your content,” Meyer says. “By having this visualization in Databox, we can quickly see trends for how user engagement is increasing or decreasing over time.”

Event Count

Event Count is a new metric that replaced Goal Completion from the old version of Google’s tool. It tracks the number of times users triggered an event on your website.

Events can include a variety of actions that may happen on a website from any industry, including user acquisition and engagement events (new user sign up, bounce rate, newsletter sign up), lead generation and conversion events (live chat interaction, completed contact form, demo request), and more.

GA4 allows you to dive deeper into your top events so that you can better understand your users’ journey and fine-tune it to better fit what they’re looking to learn or do on your website.

Benchmark

According to Databox’s own Benchmark data, the median value of event count for B2B and SaaS companies is 21.79K

For B2C companies, the median value is 33.35K.

Expert Insight: If you’re unsure which events to set up and track for your SaaS business, learn which are the essential ones to optimize your marketing funnel and how to track them in our Monthly Marketing Performance (HubSpot & GA4) dashboard template.

Pageviews

In UA, Pageviews were defined as the total number of pages viewed on your website. The tool counted even the repeated views of the same page.

As we mentioned, Pageviews are now Views in GA4. In the main dashboard, you can track Views, Views per session, and Views per user. However, it’s important to highlight that this metric now combines pageviews and screenviews, meaning that it also counts app screen views within the same metric (not separately as UA did).

Unique Pageviews is no longer available in GA4.

Recommended Datablock

To track pageviews in Databox, Stream Creative’s Steve James recommends the Line Graph Datablock with comparisons turned on:

“Pageviews is a key metric to ensure that new and returning visitors continue to access content on your website,” James says. “A solid SEO strategy along with social, email, and other campaigns can be measured in part by watching this metric.”

“With a custom dashboard software like Databox we can quickly compare and assess when we see a high number of pageviews and set up comparison data with our traffic sources and specific page results.”

Conversions

In Google Analytics, you had to designate specific user actions as goals to consider them a conversion. UA is able to count only one conversion per session for the goal you’ve specified.

Instead of goals, you specify conversion events in GA4. However, GA4 typically counts every conversion per session for your event. That means that if the same user submits their address for the newsletter two times, GA4 will count that as two conversions.

If you prefer one conversion per session per event way of counting, you can edit your conversion counting settings and choose Once per session.

Based on Databox’s research on how to track conversions in GA4, more than 75% of survey respondents believe GA4 is a better tool for tracking conversions.

In addition over 60% of our survey respondents stated that the additional options in GA4 for conversion tracking helped a lot.

Expert Insight: Tracking conversions in GA4 may come with a learning curve, but this guide with the top best practices, from setting up custom events to creating them for the entire customer journey, will surely help you get started.

Engagement Rate

As we’ve mentioned above, Engagement Rate is one of the new metrics available in GA4. It tells you the opposite of what Bounce Rate uncovers: the percentage of engaged sessions on your website.

You can calculate this by dividing the number of engaged sessions by the total number of sessions during a specific time frame and then multiplying the result by 100.

You can find this metric under “Session.”

Benchmark

According to Databox’s own Benchmark data, the median value of engagement rate for B2B and SaaS companies is 53.52%

For B2C companies, the median value is 56.65K.

Expert Insight: You can easily track and measure the overall engagement on your website by using this, customizable Google Analytics 4 Engagement Overview dashboard template. By monitoring sessions, events, views, and more and filtering them based on device, page title, and other elements, you can quickly understand what prompts people to interact with your website and what fails to keep them around for longer.

Custom Metrics and Dimensions in GA4

GA4 allows for greater customization through custom metrics and dimensions:

• Custom metrics let you measure specific actions or values unique to your business.
• Custom dimensions allow you to segment your data in ways that are meaningful to your organization.
• These customizations enable more targeted analysis and reporting tailored to your specific business needs. Event tracking helps you monitor user interactions like button clicks, video plays, and downloads, making your data analysis more comprehensive.

Limitations of Google Analytics

While GA4 offers powerful analytics capabilities, it’s important to be aware of its limitations:

• Data sampling can affect accuracy for high-traffic websites.
• Privacy regulations may limit data collection in certain regions.
• The learning curve can be steep for users transitioning from Universal Analytics.
• Some metrics from UA are not directly comparable in GA4 due to different measurement methodologies.

Integrating Google Analytics with Other Tools

To get the most out of your analytics data, consider integrating GA4 with other tools:

• Connect GA4 with Google Ads for more comprehensive advertising insights.
• Use Google Tag Manager to easily manage and deploy tracking tags without modifying your website’s code, simplifying data collection and updates.
• Use the GA4 API to pull data into custom dashboards or reporting tools (used for Databox).
• Integrate with CRM systems to tie website behavior to customer data.
• Combine GA4 data with social media analytics for a holistic view of your digital presence.

Best Practices for Analyzing Google Analytics Data

To make the most of your GA4 data:

1. Set clear goals and KPIs aligned with your business objectives.
2. Regularly review and update your event tracking to ensure you’re capturing relevant data.
3. Use segments to analyze different user groups and behaviors.
4. Leverage GA4’s machine learning capabilities for predictive insights.
5. Combine quantitative data from GA4 with qualitative data from user feedback and surveys.
6. Continuously test and optimize based on your analytics insights.

Simplify Website Analytics with Databox

While some website analytics tools can initially be overwhelming, we’ve built Databox to make things simple from the start.

Our business analytics platform allows you to monitor and report on your business performance in a streamlined manner, on any device, and by collecting data from any source. You will finally be able to remove all your least favorite activities from your plate, like:

• Spending hours on building complex reports that few people will actually understand
• Wasting precious minutes logging in and out of tools to collect the data you need
• Tracking goals in a spreadsheet and updating them manually
• Waiting until the end of a campaign to see what worked and what didn’t

Your solution for all of the above is in Databox:

• Gain access to time-saver templates and automation features
• Connect your entire toolkit to our platform through powerful integrations
• Easily set goals for your most important metrics and visualize progress in our tool
• Get notified when your performance is off track and tweak your campaigns before they end

Is this exactly what you were looking for? Sign up for a free trial today and get started!

The post The 11 Most-Tracked Google Analytics Metrics in GA4 appeared first on Databox.

But, when you want to look at specific metrics only, most analytics platforms give you a lot to process at once.

An ecommerce dashboard with Google Analytics metrics refines the process for you so you can get the insights you need fast. 

In this blog post, you’ll learn more about Google Analytics ecommerce dashboards and how to use them effectively. You’ll discover these topics:

• What Is an Ecommerce Analytics Dashboard and Why Do You Need One?
• What Does a Good Ecommerce Analytics Dashboard Look Like? 4 Characteristics
• 5 KPIs and Metrics to Include in Your Analytics Ecommerce Dashboard
• How to Set Up Your Google Analytics Ecommerce Dashboard
• 8 Ecommerce Google Analytics Dashboard Templates for Instant Insights

What Is an Ecommerce Analytics Dashboard and Why Do You Need One?

An ecommerce analytics dashboard is a group of visualizations based on your ecommerce store’s data. Most dashboards cover a specific goal or topic, such as traffic or audience behavior.

Ecommerce dashboards provide the following benefits:

• Efficiency: Dashboards save you time by showing you your most important metrics at a glance. They also make decision-making faster since you won’t have to wait on a report to get the relevant data.
• Better data literacy: Since dashboards make it easier for everyone to understand data, your team will be better able to draw conclusions from it regardless of skill level.
• More data deep dives: With only your most important data in focus, you’ll be better equipped to analyze your critical metrics in-depth.
• Easier communication: The clear and concise data visualizations on your dashboard present your findings clearly, leading to simpler communication and a higher chance of buy-in from stakeholders.

What Does a Good Ecommerce Analytics Dashboard Look Like? 4 Characteristics

Maximize the benefits you get from your ecommerce dashboard by following our dashboard best practices and tips to build a better dashboard. A good ecommerce analytics dashboard has these traits:

1. Most important metrics first: Put your dashboard’s most important metrics in a prominent space or near its top.
2. Visual cues and appeal: Use colors wisely to highlight highs and lows in your data. Choose appropriate visualizations for each of your metrics.
3. Concise presentation: Keep your dashboard to only the metrics you absolutely need to draw conclusions related to its goals.
4. Business goal relevance: Build dashboards around your main business goals and sub-goals.

PRO TIP: Get Useful, Actionable Data on Your Ecommerce Store’s Performance

To improve the performance of your online store, it’s vital to have access to useful and actionable data. But, with so many metrics available to track, it may be hard to determine which ones will actually help you move the needle.

That’s why we have created a concise dashboard template that only tracks the most important metrics for analyzing the core elements of your ecommerce businesses, such as:

1. Transactions and orders. How many transactions does your online store process in a day, a week, or a month? How many orders, and how many were placed on the same day of the previous month? 
2. Sales volume and trends. See how much money has been generated from sales in the current month. Analyze daily trends to compare with your sales goals and take action to reach them. 
3. Website traffic trends. Track the number of new and returning visitors to your website and the number of individual sessions initiated by these users. 
4. Conversion to customers. See what percentage of your website visitors convert to customers. 
5. Revenue per customer. See how much revenue you get from each unique visitor that interacts with your store during a given time period.
6. Amount per transaction. Track the average dollar amount each customer spends on a sale.
7. Best-selling products. See your most popular products in terms of volume and revenue in a given period.

And more…

Now you can benefit from the experience of our Google Analytics 4 experts, who have put together a plug-and-play Databox template showing the most important KPIs for monitoring your online store’s performance. It’s simple to implement and start using as a standalone dashboard or in ecommerce reports!

You can easily set it up in just a few clicks – no coding required.

To set up the dashboard, follow these 3 simple steps:

Step 1: Get the template 

Step 2: Connect your Google Analytics 4 account with Databox. 

Step 3: Watch your dashboard populate in seconds.

Try this template

5 KPIs and Metrics to Include in Your Analytics Ecommerce Dashboard

With all those best practices said, you still might not know what KPIs and metrics to start with. We consulted 20 Ecommerce experts about their thoughts on dashboards, 19 of whom use Google Analytics for their Ecommerce websites. They shared five key metrics with us:

• Conversion rate: Percentage of your visitors who buy an item (i.e. convert to becoming a customer)
• Shopping cart abandonment rate: Percentage of your visitors who put items in their shopping cart but don’t check out
• Average order value (AOV): Average cost of the orders your customers make
• Customer acquisition cost (CAC): Average cost of converting a visitor to a customer
• Customer lifetime value (CLV): Total average money a customer earns you throughout their time interacting with your company

All these metrics relate specifically to customer behavior at different points in their purchasing journey. They indicate how many customers want to buy, how much they want to purchase, and the overall value they bring to your store.

How to Set Up Your Google Analytics Ecommerce Dashboard

Before creating your ecommerce Google Analytics dashboard, set up your Google Analytics account for ecommerce tracking.

Then, sign up for an ecommerce reporting software like Databox and connect your Google Analytics account. Databox lets you connect your integration and choose your data source at the same time in this menu.

After you choose Google Analytics, you’ll decide what metrics to track on your dashboard. Your software may ask you to connect your account at this point, but Databox leaves that step for later.

From there, you’ll authorize your connection to Google Analytics using your login credentials. You’ll then choose the exact data source and view.

Congrats! You have a Google Analytics dashboard for your ecommerce store now.

8 Ecommerce Google Analytics Dashboard Templates for Instant Insights

We also asked 20 ecommerce experts about their top Google Analytics ecommerce dashboard templates. To help you understand their priorities here’s a little more information about them.

Nearly fifteen out of the 20 respondents use two to five dashboards, meaning they keep their data analysis varied but focused.

More than 15 of the 20 respondents agree that different businesses need different data dashboards, that customizable metric display is important, and that ecommerce is one of the most competitive industries.

Out of the experts who responded to our poll, 13 are store owners, and 7 work for agencies that serve ecommerce businesses. Ten of the total respondents manage single-brand stores, seven work at multi-brand stores, and three analyze data for marketplaces.

Now, let’s see what dashboard templates these ecommerce pros prioritize. You can find even more templates in our gallery of ecommerce examples.

1. Ecommerce Overview
2. Audience Overview
3. Sales Performance
4. Product Performance
5. Customer Checkout Behavior
6. Acquisition and Conversion
7. Customer Shopping Behavior
8. Email Campaign Performance

1. Ecommerce Overview Dashboard

“The most important Google Analytics dashboard for your eCommerce business is the eCommerce Overview dashboard,” says Maggie Simmons from Max Effect Marketing, a multi-brand agency. “This dashboard will show you the total number of visits, the number of new visits, total revenue, and total sales rank. These are all important metrics to look at and analyze so that you can determine if any changes need to be made or if other factors may be preventing your eCommerce business from reaching its peak potential.”

See these metrics in action in Databox’s Google Analytics (Ecommerce Overview) Dashboard Template.

It gives an overview of all your transactions, revenue, and visitors using these metrics:

• Transactions
• Total revenue
• Revenue by channel
• Revenue by visitors
• Users and sessions
• Ecommerce conversion rate
• Revenue per visitor (RPV)
• Average order value (AOV)

At a glance, you’ll understand how much money your store is making and how your visitors contribute to it.

Plus, using Databox’s drag-and-drop editor, you can change the order of your metrics or the visualizations you use. You can also include or exclude metrics as you see fit.

2. Audience Overview Dashboard

Ryan Stewart of Webris, a multi-brand agency says, “In my experience, the most important Google Analytics dashboard for eCommerce is the Audience Overview. This dashboard contains information about your visitors, the pages they visit on your site, and where they come from. It provides insights into how your customers behave, enabling you to decide how to improve your website.”

Stewart continues, “The metrics I see most often are bounce rate and average time on site. These metrics show me how users are interacting with my site—or not interacting!—and help me decide what steps I should take next in order to improve that interaction. The insights this dashboard provided were invaluable in helping me understand my customers’ behavior while on my site and where they went when they left it.”

Databox’s Google Analytics Audience Overview Dashboard uses metrics like the ones Stewart mentioned to help you understand your audience’s behavior. By understanding where your users and sessions are coming from, you’ll have a better idea of how to optimize your store accordingly. 

It tracks these metrics specifically:

• Users
• Sessions
• New vs. returning sessions
• Sessions by affinities
• Page views
• Bounce rate
• Pages per session
• Average duration
• Sessions by country
• Sessions by device

Customize the color, metrics, and visualizations as you’d like to view your data the way you want.

3. Sales Performance Dashboard

Out of the Google Analytics dashboards Kurt Walker uses for Mill City Home Buyers, a single-brand store, “The most significant dashboard that is helping us is the Sales Performance dashboard,” Walker says.

“Sales is an integral aspect of the operations of an ecommerce website. We regularly have to monitor how our metrics are performing to keep an eye out for any irregularities. Some of the metrics we’ve included in our sales performance dashboard are Cost per Acquisition, Sales Conversion Rate, and Refund and Return Rate. The dashboard has provided us with several insights, such as the cost of doing sales or revenue generation trends,” Walker continues.

At RevenueGeeks, a multi-brand store, Elisa Bender counts on the same type of dashboard. “In my experience, the eCommerce Sales Performance dashboard proved to be the most important for my business. That’s because it allows me to see what products are more popular with the public and how well my company’s sales and profits are doing. As a result, I can develop targeted strategies to drive my sales up. It contains metrics like the number of customers, conversion rate, and profit margins,” Bender says.

Bender continues, “It gave me a deeper insight into the products that were being sold more and the type of customers who bought them. So, I could develop strategies that solely catered to this niche audience. What’s more, is that I was able to understand the different factors that increased my revenue. As a result, I could forecast future revenues and develop ways to boost them.”

Databox’s Google Analytics Ecommerce Sales Dashboard uses similar metrics to help you monitor your ecommerce sales. This template focuses on purchases, orders, and costs to give you critical revenue numbers.

All of its featured metrics include:

• Visits
• Percentage of visitors who buy
• Number of orders
• Gross revenue
• Session value by channel
• Shipping costs
• Revenue by source/medium
• Average order value
• Purchases by day of the week

If you’d like to use some of the metrics our experts mentioned using in their sales dashboards, drag and drop them using Databox’s Dashboard Designer. Add or replace whatever metrics you’d like to create a truly custom sales performance dashboard.

4. Product Performance Dashboard

Kyla Smith from Evolve Fit Wear, a multi-brand store, implements an ecommerce product performance dashboard in the store’s analytics. Smith says it contains the following metrics: “Product revenue, unique purchases, average price, product refund amount, cart-to-detail rate, and buy-to-detail rate.”

“This dashboard helps give insights into which products are the best-sellers,” Smith says. “With this information, I can optimize my site to showcase these products on the homepage and through email marketing campaigns to potentially increase my sales. Secondly, it helps me understand which products are underperforming so I can either mark down the prices on those products or create a new collection to try and give customers more exposure to them.”

The Google Analytics Product Revenue Dashboard Template for Databox achieves similar goals.

It lists revenue by product alongside metrics that add context like transactions and AOV. Here’s the full list of included metrics:

• Revenue by product
• Sessions
• Revenue by device
• Revenue by source/medium
• Ecommerce conversion rate
• Transactions
• Average order value
• Revenue per visit

Move the metrics around however you’d like in Databox’s drag-and-drop interface to put them in an order that makes sense to you.

5. Customer Checkout Behavior Dashboard

What’s the top ecommerce Google Analytics dashboard for Jeffrey Aspacio at RedLettersPH, a single-brand agency? “It’s the Customers Checkout Behavior report, with Enhanced Ecommerce configured,” Aspacio says.

Aspacio explains, “This report contains the checkout steps and the metrics that are tracked include session drop-offs for each step and events were set up to track errors encountered by users in any step of the checkout funnel. This tracks a metric called the “error rate”, making sure this decreases over time. The type of error is pushed to the event label in Google Analytics’ Top Events report. When a certain error type is persistent, recommendations are provided to the developers to investigate and resolve the issue.”

Track your customer checkout journey with Databox using the Google Analytics (Ecommerce: Checkout Behavior) template. It displays each stage of checkout in a pipeline to show you where bottlenecks happen.

You’ll monitor these metrics:

• Conversions in the information, shipping, payment, and transaction phases of checkout
• Information dropoff
• Shipping dropoff
• Payment dropoff

Databox can also display other forms of data in a pipeline or funnel for other ecommerce situations, such as in the marketing to sales funnel. Choose the “Funnel” or “Pipeline” visualization from the Dashboard Designer’s Visualization Types category.

6. Acquisition and Conversion Dashboard

Jared Hendricks from Feruo, a single-brand store, is a self-proclaimed “religious Google Analytics user.” Hendricks vastly prefers Universal Analytics (UA) over the upcoming Google Analytics 4 (GA4) and uses an acquisition and goals conversion dashboard based on UA.

“Here, I can set up predefined rules and see what customers I am getting, and from where. I utilize UTM tags to determine which marketing efforts are bringing me the most valuable customers. I also check the steps customers are going through and combining that with heatmaps (MS Clarity) I can determine what necessary changes/improvements I should make in the landing page to drive the max sales,” Hendricks explains.

“The latest GA4 does not have this level of user behavior tracking in goal conversion so far and it is truly disappointing. This I believe is the single most important dashboard every ecommerce store should religiously implement to remove any friction from their customer acquisition process,” Hendricks adds.

If you want to track where user acquisition happens in your marketing, try the Google Analytics Acquisition Snapshot Dashboard Template. This dashboard tracks traffic sources, page performance, and keyword performance to offer a comprehensive view of your acquisition points.

Check out the full list of metrics:

• Direct traffic
• Sessions by source
• Bounce rate
• Percent of new sessions
• Sessions by source
• Sessions by social networks
• Organic keywords
• Paid keywords

Do you also consider GA4 difficult to use? As you get ready for the full switch, our Google Analytics 4 Acquisition Overview Dashboard Template will lend a hand. It monitors user numbers to help you connect visitor trends with revenue trends.

This dashboard includes all of these metrics:

• Total users
• New users
• 1-day active users
• 7-day active users
• 28-day active users
• Users by country
• Users by source
• Total revenue
• Total revenue by user

Databox offers plenty more GA4 templates, all of which you can customize as you wish. The Databox GA4 integration gives you access to all your most important GA4 metrics in one place to help you adjust to the new platform.

7. Customer Shopping Behavior Dashboard

“The Google Analytics dashboard that proved to be most important for our business would be Customers’ Shopping Behavior,” says David Lee from Neutypechic, a single-brand store. “ This provides us with a quantitative measure of why individuals choose to shop at our store. It allows us to understand the motivations of consumers and what eventually impacts their buying decisions. This allowed us to fill gaps in the marketplace and identify required products before they run out.”

Lee continues, “A customer shopping behavior contains the following metrics:

• Types of customers
• Dwell time
• Types of purchases
• Number of returning customers
• Website traffic patterns

It provides our business with insights such as what products consumers are interested in and whether they are first-time buyers or repeat customers. Once we have these insights, an informed decision can be made.”

The Google Analytics (Ecommerce: Shopping Behavior) template for Databox takes a slightly different approach to tackle the same goal. It displays a pipeline of sessions that progress through the shopping experience to show how far your customers typically get.

This template displays the following metrics:

• Pipeline with all sessions, sessions with product views, sessions with cart additions, sessions with checkouts, and sessions with transactions
• Shopping activities
• Cart additions
• Cart abandonment
• Checkout abandonment

If you’re looking for a dashboard with more of the metrics David Lee mentioned, feel free to start one from scratch or modify this template by dragging and dropping your preferred data.

8. Email Campaign Performance Dashboard

“As a CEO, I have released and worked on many long-term campaigns for our company. I have noticed that email campaigns are becoming a more efficient and effective way to communicate and engage with our customers. That’s why Email Google Analytics eCommerce Dashboard is my favorite dashboard for 2022,” says Chris Walker of Legiit, an online marketplace.

Walker continues, “The dashboard gives us a performance report for the email campaign that we launch while providing a bounce rate for the traffic from the email campaign. Importantly, it shows us the revenue from the email campaign which helps us track our progress so that we can meet the objectives of our company. The dashboard has helped us gain insights that we can use to improve our strategies so that we can focus on increasing our sales and monitoring how our resources are being used.”

Databox’s Google Analytics Email Marketing Dashboard Template analyzes email performance in a variety of contexts, including ecommerce. It tracks what email campaigns sessions come from and how many sessions come from your email campaigns overall.

You’ll see all of these metrics on this dashboard:

• Sessions from email
• Sessions by email by date
• Sessions from email by campaign
• Sessions from email by device type
• Landing page sessions from email
• Signups from email (graph)
• Signups from email (table)

If you consider email an important pillar of your marketing strategy, you’ll also discover many more email marketing templates for Databox, including ones with Google Analytics metrics.

Monitor Your Online Store’s Performance in Databox

Databox has a low barrier to entry so business owners of any skill level can analyze their metrics right away. It has a free forever plan perfect for users focused on a few data sources. Plus, the easy-to-use Dashboard Designer and templates make anyone a pro at creating their own dashboards.

Since it’s so easy to use Databox, it’ll become easier and faster to look at the Google Analytics metrics that matter most to your store. Sign up for free today.

The post 8 Essential Ecommerce Google Analytics Dashboards Recommended by Ecommerce Experts appeared first on Databox.

So, how do you ensure everyone who comes across the report understands it? And more importantly, how do you present data in a way that makes it useful to your client or manager?

In this article, we’ll clear any confusion you might have about web analytics reports by covering the following:

• What is Web Analytics?
• What is a Web Analytics Report?
• What are the Most Commonly Used Web Analytics Metrics?
• How to Create a Web Analytics Report?
• Free Web Analytics Templates

What Is Web Analytics?

Web analytics is the data of your website.

It is a communication map that presents you with pain points that you might not have been aware you had. Web analytics lets you see what’s going well, as well as what’s going poorly, for your business and product. In short, web analytics gives you access to the world around your website.

One thing you should note is that, with web analytics, you can’t just use the numbers presented to try and optimize certain metrics – you have to understand how they work together.

If you are an online marketer or a business owner, you are probably facing a lot of challenges on how to track your web traffic effectively. It’s no secret that Google Analytics is the most popular platform for tracking your website visitors’ actions and behaviors, but there are also other options that you can include in your analytics strategy like data from Mixpanel or Adobe Analytics. Regardless of the tool you choose, you should know that website analytics tools are among the 3 most frequently used for performance monitoring and reporting, as proven by recent research by Databox.

What Is a Web Analytics Report?

A Web Analytics Report is a file containing a snapshot of data from your web domain. This data can be used to make informed decisions for your business. These reports tell you who is coming to your site and why, which in turn helps you better reach out to potential customers or convert existing ones into paying customers.

In other words, a Web Analytics Report is the lifeblood of any website.

These reports are basically documents that contain information about the online presence of a business. They can be broad or specific, but they all have one thing in common: they are extremely helpful sets of information.

However, the interpretation of a web analytics report is not as straightforward as one may assume. This is why many marketers avoid analyzing their website data and instead focus on the more ‘creative’ aspects of marketing such as content marketing or social media.

The image below shows one example of a Web Analytics Report from Google Analytics.

What Are the Most Commonly Used Web Analytics Metrics?

With numerous web analytics metrics available to track, it is easy to get lost in endless analysis and consequently spend more time looking at reports than taking an action.

So, what are some of the most important web analytics metrics?

Here are the top metrics marketers often track:

• Website Visitors – The number of visitors you get on your website. You can get visits either from new or returning visitors. New visitors or unique visitors, are the number of people that visited your website within a specific time period. Returning visitors are anyone that have previously been on your website and returned.

• Conversion rate – This is the percentage of people who have fulfilled a specific goal on your website like signing up for your product or newsletter, filling up a form, adding a product to cart etc. The specific action depends on the type of your website and business. Analyzing conversions, for example, along with your traffic, can show you the quality of your leads.

• Exit rate – This is the number of people who viewed multiple pages of your website and then decided to leave, or exited on a certain page. Exit rate can show you what aspects of your website needs optimization. Similar to bounce rate, a high exit rate on certain pages isn’t necessarily bad. Therefore, make sure you analyze this metric along with other relevant data.

• Bounce rate – This is the percentage of people who enter your website and immediately leave without taking any further action. Most marketers try to keep their bounce rates low, howveer, a high bounce rate doesn’t necessarily need to be a bad thing. Since it all depends on the type of the page visited, make sure you analyze this metric along with other metrics.

• Traffic sources – If you want to find out where is your audience specifically coming from, this metric is a must for your Web Analytics Report. There are three different types of traffic to focus on — referral traffic, direct traffic and social traffic.

• Device usage – This measurement reports the percentage of users who access your website through different devices.

• Average Session duration – This measure takes into account events as well as the average time a user spent on your website.

• Pageviews – This metric show how your website visitors view your pages and the number of pages an individual visits on your site before exiting. This metric, like most web analytics metrics, has to be analyzed along with other data ot get a full understanding.

Note: When analyzing your website, it’s quite easy to get caught up in some vanity metrics like bounce rate, time on site, and page views. These metrics can also provide you with a lot of valuable insights, but only when they are paired with other metrics.

PRO TIP: How to track these 10 popular Google Analytics 4 metrics

Sure, there are dozens (and dozens?) more Google Analytics 4 metrics you could track. But, starting with these 10 commonly tracked metrics will give you a pretty high-level view of how your marketing is working…

1. Sessions: The number of sessions can tell you how many times people are returning to your website. Obviously, the higher the better.
2. Sessions by organic keyword: Which organic keywords bring in the most traffic to your website? This may help you determine whether your SEO investments are paying off.
3. Bounce rate: Do visitors leave shortly after landing on your website? Or do they stick around?
4. Average session duration: How much time are people spending on your website? Users with a high average session duration are most likely relevant to your company.
5. Goal completions: How many users responded to your call to action?

If you want to track these in Google Analytics, you might find the visualizations limiting. It’s also a bit time-consuming to combine all the metrics you need in one view.

To better understand how your website performs in terms of traffic growth and conversions, we’ve made this plug-and-play dashboard that contains all the essential metrics for understanding how successful you are at optimizing different aspects of your website.

You can easily set it up in just a few clicks – no coding required.

To set up the dashboard, follow these 3 simple steps:

Step 1: Get the template 

Step 2: Connect your Google Analytics account with Databox. 

Step 3: Watch your dashboard populate in seconds.

Try this template

Now, when we understand the most important metrics we can proceed with creating a Web Analytics Report.

How to Create a Web Analytics Report?

A good report is like a good story. And, a bad report is, well, like a boring story. Of course, not all stories are interesting. But a good report, the same as a good story, does 3 things:

• It sets the reader up to be interested.
• It handles the reader’s questions and doubts.
• It presents information in a way that will interest the reader.

If you want to write a good report, here are some of the things to consider:

• What are the key business concerns? – Determine your objectives.
• Create the report outline. – A good outline is like a road map of your story.
• Define the source of the data. – Adobe Analytics, Google Analytics or something else?
• Present the big picture. – But focus on the details.
• Choose a reliable software support. – Speed up the process of creating your report.
• Connect the data source and software dashboard. – Visualize the data.
• Customize reports with desirable design. – Build the story frame.
• Launch the premiere – Present it to your team or client.

Related: Business Report: What is it & How to Write a Great One? (With Examples)

Free Web Analytics Report Templates

Who doesn’t like free stuff, huh?

We created 100+ Web Analytics Dashboards that track web analytics metrics from some of the most popular analytics tools like Google Analytics, Mixpanel, Adobe Analytics, and more. In case you can’t find your favorite tool among our custom dashboard software lists of integrations, pull any data into Databox via integrations with Zapier, Integromat,  Google Sheets, or an SQL database.

With these dashboards, marketing and SEO teams will be able to easily track the performance of their website and make better, data-driven business decisions.

• Google Analytics Website Engagement Dashboard Template
• Google Analytics Landing Page SEO Dashboard Template
• Google Analytics (Ecommerce overview) Dashboard Template
• Google Analytics Traffic Growth Dashboard Template
• Google Ads PPC Performance Dashboard Template
• Google Analytics Social Media Dashboard Template
• Google Analytics Email Marketing Dashboard Template

Google Analytics Website Engagement Dashboard

Here is a simple Google Analytics Website Engagement Dashboard Template that provides you with an overview of the general performance of your website. It’s a good starting point for deeper analysis, and it is based on Google Analytics website traffic and conversion data.

Google Analytics Landing Page SEO Dashboard

Are you worried about your SEO performance? Well, the Google Analytics Landing Page SEO Dashboard Template will alleviate your worries. This template will help you track your organic traffic effectively and spot trends in a timely manner.

Google Analytics Ecommerce Dashboard

If you want to analyze an eCommerce business, a good starting point is to compare the number of transactions made each week or month to the previous time period. That way you can see how sales have been trending. With the Google Analytics (Ecommerce overview) Dashboard Template you have all transactions and revenue information as well as other important eCommerce metrics, at a single display. How cool is that?

Google Analytics Traffic Growth Dashboard

Do you want deeper insights into your website traffic? No problem. We created this Google Analytics Traffic Growth Dashboard that shows your most important traffic sources and metrics like bounce rate and sessions by device category, device branding, social network, geolocation, and more.

Google Ads PPC Performance Dashboard

If you run paid campaigns, you can get a lot of value from tracking performance data. But how do you make sense of it? Everything is easier with this Google Ads PPC Performance Dashboard, which provides a ton of valuable information on your ad groups’ performance and keyword performance.

Google Analytics Social Media Dashboard

This Google Analytics Social Media Dashboard Template will give you a clear picture of your social media performance at a glance. Get real-time data on your traffic by social media channel, goal conversions, bounce rate, and much more.

Google Analytics Email Marketing Dashboard

A short, simple, actionable email report like this Google Analytics Email Marketing Dashboard can help you track your email campaigns in one place. Download this dashboard template to visualize email metrics like signups by campaign type, date, and device.

Present Crucial Web Analytics Data to Your Clients or Key Stakeholders Using Databox Web Analytics Reports

As you saw, web analytics reports aren’t scary. They can actually be pretty easy to set up and when you know what you’re looking for, also incredibly valuable and actionable.

Would you like to take your analytics reports to the next level?

Enters Databox.

Use Databox to monitor all user activity on your website in one place and you reach your business goals faster. Connect your dashboard to visualize data from the most popular website analytics tools such as Google Analytics and Mixpanel, and curate a custom dashboard to share with your marketing team.

Sign up for Databox now and generate your own high-value website analytics reports in just a few clicks.

The post How to Create, Read, and Understand Web Analytics Reports appeared first on Databox.

But here’s the thing—most business owners are handed this map without a clue about where “X” marks the spot. For many, Google Analytics 4 data might as well be written in hieroglyphics.

Sure, the vast majority know how important it is to track their performance in Google Analytics 4, but how will you know that the numbers you’re seeing are objectively good and in line with industry standards?

As benchmarks highlight where you stand, the next challenge is understanding why your numbers look the way they do. Instead of manually digging through reports, teams now use AI data analysts, like Databox MCP, to ask plain-English questions about performance and get answers based on their actual metrics, definitions, and historical data. This makes it easier to interpret shifts in engagement rate, conversions, or session trends without second-guessing the context behind the numbers.

For this report, we examined Google Analytics 4 metrics, such as sessions, views, users, average session duration, engagement rate, bounce rate, and conversions, across 15 different industries. GA4 is complicated as it is, no need to struggle with reading the numbers as well.

Let’s get started:

• Sessions
• Views
• Users
• Average Session Duration
• Engagement Rate
• Bounce Rate
• Conversions

Sessions

Across all industries, the median number of sessions for August 2023 was 3.88K.

Let’s take a closer look at sessions across different industries:

Apparel & Footwear stands out with exceptionally high sessions (38.22K), significantly surpassing the median. This could be attributed to frequent online shopping behaviors, seasonal trends, or promotions.

The Automotive industry also has a high number of sessions, which could be because of people constantly researching and comparing vehicles, prices, features, and reviews. This ongoing consumer interest can result in a high volume of website traffic, leading to more sessions.

Furthermore, many automotive companies have invested heavily in creating online showrooms or configurators that allow users to customize their vehicles. These interactive tools can encourage users to stay for longer sessions on the website.

Expert recommendation: Use sessions to assess your website’s engagement. Tracking sessions doesn’t only come down to how many people open your website; you can use the data in a number of ways. One great insight you can get through them is whether users find your content valuable and if they’ll return at some point in the future. You should use this information to understand better how users interact with your website and improve their experience, simultaneously boosting conversions.

Views

Across all industries, the median number of views for August 2023 was 9.04K.

Let’s take a closer look at views across different industries:

Just like with sessions, Apparel & Footwear is the leading industry when it comes to the number of views these websites generate. The popularity of online shopping and seasonal trends likely play the biggest role here as well.

E-commerce and Marketplaces also have high views, which is expected given the nature of browsing multiple products online. E-commerce websites typically offer a wide range of products, sometimes numbering in the thousands or more. This variety attracts a diverse audience searching for various items.

Expert recommendation: Want an easier way to stay on top of views and see how they connect to other key GA4 metrics? Our Google Analytics 4 Acquisition Overview Dashboard lets you dig deep into your key traffic sources, see where the views are coming from, and check out how the users interact with the website once they land. Stop juggling around GA4’s labyrinth of reports and track your key insights from one place.

Users

Across all industries, the median number of users for August 2023 was 2.9K.

Let’s take a closer look at users across different industries:

Once again, Apparel & Footwear dominates, reflecting a larger customer base frequently exploring new trends.

On the other hand, industries like Construction and Industrial are on the lower end of the spectrum with the least amount of users in August. Part of the reason is probably because these businesses often serve a more specific and niche audience. Their products and services are typically B2B focused, which means their target audience may be smaller and more specialized.

Expert recommendation: Users can tell you a lot more than just how many unique impressions your website has. But you need to connect it to other GA4 insights properly. For example, it can help you better understand user behavior on your site. You can track their journey, see which pages they visit, and identify drop-off points. This information is crucial for increasing conversions.

Average Session Duration

Across all industries, the median average session duration for August 2023 was 2m 38s.

Let’s take a closer look at the average session duration across different industries:

Based on our research, Education and Travel & Leisure have longer session durations. This could be because users are likely spending more time researching courses or vacation destinations (the latter can be due to seasonality).

In the Travel & Leisure industry, planning a trip can involve complex decision-making processes. Users may spend more time comparing prices, reading reviews, and exploring different options before making a booking. Similarly, in the Education industry, users may spend time researching and selecting the right courses or materials to purchase.

Expert recommendation: If the content on your website isn’t worth going through, there are no strategies or tactics that will help you improve your average session duration. Before you start posting engaging videos and images, making the design better, and fine-tuning other page elements, make sure your content satisfies the user intent and actually gets them interested in reading what you have to say.

Engagement Rate

Across all industries, the median engagement rate for August 2023 was 56.23%.

Let’s take a closer look at the engagement rate across different industries:

One of the reasons for higher engagement rates in the E-commerce and Marketplace industry can be due to the specific algorithms they use for product suggestions. On these websites, we often find more detailed reviews, related product recommendations, interactive videos of the products being used, and similar elements.

The second highest engagement rate industry is Health & Wellness. Here, users are often seeking valuable information about topics like fitness, nutrition, mental health, and medical conditions. They may spend more time reading articles, watching videos, or interacting with tools and calculators to gather the information they need for their health-related decisions.

Expert recommendation: The engagement rate isn’t the only website engagement metric you should be monitoring. Instead, you should make a list of your 5-8 most relevant engagement data points and focus on them primarily to get a better website performance evaluation and see whether users are interacting with your website in the way you want them to. Unfortunately, doing this isn’t as straightforward as it should be in GA4. You need to keep an eye on different reports and maybe even compile them in a separate spreadsheet for better monitoring. Or, you can simply use Databox and connect your GA4 account to track all of your key engagement metrics in one comprehensive dashboard. You can set it up and start monitoring your data in minutes. Download our Google Analytics 4 Engagement Overview Dashboard and see how easy it is.

Bounce Rate

Across all industries, the median bounce rate for August 2023 was 44.82%.

Let’s take a closer look at the bounce rate across different industries:

Consulting & Professional Services and Information Technology industries recorded the highest bounce rates in August 2023.

This might come down to their complex offerings. Visitors may land on a website looking for specific information or solutions, and if they don’t find what they need quickly, they bounce. Complex services can lead to a higher bounce rate if the website does not effectively communicate the value proposition. Conversely, they might’ve found what they needed, decided to contact the business immediately, and left immediately after.  

Expert recommendation: A great way to reduce your website’s bounce rate is to experiment with different exit-intent pop-ups. They are triggered when it looks like someone is about to leave the website. Some useful things you can do with your exit-intent pop-ups include offering discounts, linking useful content related to what they’re already reading, asking for feedback, and more.

Conversions 

Across all industries, the median number of conversions for August 2023 was 182.

Let’s take a closer look at conversions across different industries:

Just like with sessions and views, Apparel & Footwear also recorded the highest number of conversions in August. Again, this can be attributed to seasonal trends.

Many Apparel & Footwear businesses offer end-of-summer sales and promotions in August to clear out summer inventory and make way for fall collections. These sales events can attract more shoppers and result in higher conversion rates.

Furthermore, in many regions, August is a month when students and parents engage in back-to-school shopping, which can lead to an increase in purchases of clothing and footwear.

Expert recommendation: You’ve generated traffic to your web page. The users go through your landing page and decide they want to buy. Great! But make sure you don’t complicate the last part of the conversion with an intimidating submission form. Simplify your form submissions and only ask the customer for the most relevant details. For example, if your conversion goal is a newsletter sign-up, don’t complicate it by asking the user for their phone numbers.

To learn more about improving your website conversions, Adam Goyette, VP of Marketing at Help Scout, shares some interesting insights into how they improved the website conversion rate to boost free trials by 6% and demo requests by 56%.

The post Google Analytics 4 Industry Benchmarks for 2023 and Beyond appeared first on Databox.

We’ve been looking for an important piece of information for a while, and finally, it seems we’ve managed to track it down.

But wait!

It’s a 404 error, the page no longer exists, and we have to go back to the drawing board.

When it comes to running your own site, 404 errors are no less annoying. While an occasional one isn’t a big deal and shouldn’t affect the ranking of your page, having multiple recurring errors can negatively impact your SEO.

In addition, it significantly lowers the quality of user experience, possibly costing you conversions.

That’s why it’s important to keep track of 404 errors as they pop up, hopefully before too many users run into them. You can accomplish that with good reporting practices and by relying on Google Analytics Reports that will help you monitor, find, and fix 404 errors.

As you monitor 404 errors, the challenge isn’t just collecting the data, it’s interpreting what’s actually happening. Instead of manually digging through reports to understand patterns, teams now use AI data analysts, like Databox MCP, to ask simple questions about performance and get answers based on their real metrics and historical trends. For example, you can ask why 404 errors increased during a specific period and get a clear explanation grounded in your actual traffic data, helping you quickly identify whether the issue is technical, structural, or campaign-related.

Learn everything there is about Google Analytics 404 reports as we cover the following:

• What’s a 404 Error?
• Why is the Goole Analytics 404 Report Important?
• How to Quickly find 404 Errors in Google Analytics
• How to Track 404 Errors in Google Tag Manager
• How to Create a Custom Report for Finding and Fixing 404 Errors in Google Analytics
• How to Set Up Alerts for 404 Error Increase
• How to Check 404 Errors in Google Analytics 4
• How to Track 500 Errors in Google Analytics
• 404 Page SEO Best Practices
• How to Automate 404 Error Reporting with Databox

What’s a 404 Error?

This really isn’t that complicated: a 404 error is a status code. These status codes are simply your browser’s way of telling you that your page couldn’t be found. There are many reasons for the occurrence of a 404 error. The page may no longer be” there” — due to a changed URL or the page being deleted. Perhaps the user typed in the wrong URL, or the link they clicked had a typo. Even server errors or bad redirect commands can be the culprits.

Regardless of the cause, 404 errors show that something has gone wrong, and they can have lasting consequences to brand reputation because of poor user experience. At least, if they’re not dealt with.

Why Is the Google Analytics 404 Report Important?

Google Analytics makes the process of tracking 404 errors much easier. You can spot them automatically without having to trawl through densely packed information in an SEO audit tool.

Google Analytics 404 reports will help you identify user activity that has led to unforeseen situations, allowing you to deal with it in a timely fashion. In addition, by seeing the exact timeline of 404 events, you’ll be able to correlate spikes in error reports with changes in website structure, link-building campaigns, and other factors. That way, you’ll be able to track down and handle the root cause of these errors.

How to Quickly Find 404 Errors in Google Analytics

Google Analytics reporting is incredibly useful, but tracking down 404 errors can be tricky unless you know what you’re doing. There are three main ways you can find them — based on the page title, based on the URL, and based on a custom event.

Based on the page title

Most 404 pages have a title that contains “Page not found” or something similar. Knowing that, find out how your website identifies pages that return a 404 error.

First, open Google Analytics and navigate to the “Behavior” option. Once there, click on “Site Content” followed by “All Pages.”

Next, you should switch the Primary Dimension to “Page Title.”

Finally, type the page title of your 404 pages into the search box and click on the result.

And you’re done! You have your Google Analytics 404 report.

If you wish, you can sort pages by the number of views in order to see the most frequently appearing errors.

Based on page URL

Some websites work somewhat differently. When a 404 error occurs, they redirect or rewrite the URL. While this isn’t the best approach, some WordPress plugins use it.

If you have a website like at, the first steps are similar to the ones above. Go to the “Behavior” option in Google Analytics, click on “Site Content,” and then “All pages.” After that, type 404 or a similar identifier in the search box.

You should be able to get information about 404 errors on your website from there.

Based on a custom event

If none of the above options works, you probably need to create a custom event to track 404 errors that pop up.

This isn’t that complicated, and you just need to place a piece of JavaScript code into the body of the template you’re using for 404 pages.

Here’s an example:

<script>  
    ga('send', {
      hitType: 'event',
      eventCategory: '404 Error,
      eventAction: window.location.href,
      eventLabel: document.referrer
 	 });
</script>

After that, you’ll be able to search for 404 errors by navigating to “Behavior,” clicking on “Events,” and picking “Top Events” in Google Analytics.

This approach is a bit more complex and requires editing of the 404 template, which you may not be able to do.

In addition, you won’t be able to see the history of 404 errors. The tracking begins once you add the code, so you’ll need to wait for the error to be triggered to see results.

How to Track 404 Errors in Google Tag Manager

Google Analytics shows you only errors that have already occurred. Unless you’re checking them very frequently, you’ll only be able to respond when doing your scheduled checkup. To make sure you’re dealing with them quickly enough, you can use Google Tag Manager and monitor them in real-time.

Create a variable

First, we need to create a variable that will check the page title — “404: Page Not Found,” for example.

To do that, go to “Variables,” click “Create,” and edit the fields name, variable type, and global variable. You can name it what you want, but “JS – Page Title” or “JavaScript – Page Title” should do the trick. The variable type should be “JavaScript variable,” while the global variable name needs to be “document.title.”

This variable will report the name of the web page visitor encountered.

Create a trigger

Next, we need to create a trigger that will activate once the 404 page is viewed. Make sure your string matches the 404 page title and only the 404 page title. You don’t want regular functioning pages showing up in your report.

Give your trigger a name that will be easy to identify — “Pageviews – 404 page” is a perfectly acceptable name. Then, select “Page View” as the trigger type and ensure it fires on “Some Page Views.”

Finally, define firing conditions. Select the variable you just defined and enter a pattern that matches it. For example: contains “Page not found.”

Now you have a trigger that fires whenever a user visits a page with the specified title.

Create a tag

Just knowing how frequently they occur doesn’t help us actually fix 404 errors. We need to know the URL of the broken link and the URL of the page that contains it.

This Custom Event Tag sends information directly into Google Analytics, allowing us to spot and fix the errors easily.

As with the variable and trigger, we need to name the tag. After that, we need to select the recently made trigger from the “Triggering” section and click “Tag Configuration.” There, we can select “Google Analytics: Universal Analytics.” Define “Event” as “Track Type” — this will trigger the event when a user visits a 404 page. The “Event Category” can be defined as “404 Errors.” Using {{Page Path}} for “Action” allows you to see which URLs return the 404 error, and the “Label” {{Referrer}} will help you locate the broken links on your own site.

Lastly, in “Google Analytics Settings,” you should add the GA Variable of your Google Analytics Account. This is a unique tracking code that begins with UA.

After you’ve saved the tag, you can click “Preview” to use GTM’s debugging mode and test if your tag is firing properly. If everything is working correctly, click “Submit” and publish the container.

How to Create a Custom Report for Finding and Fixing 404 Errors in Google Analytics

If your website is set up correctly, Google Analytics should already be tracking 404 errors automatically. You can then use custom reports that will help you find and fix them. We’ll present you reports that are based on 404 errors originating from internal links and external links. That way, you’ll know if the error is originating on your website or somewhere else.

Internal links, as their name implies, lead from one page on your site to another. This is a handy report that can help you find these types of links that are triggering the 404 errors. The good thing about them is that, since you have full control over them, they’re easy to fix. However, if not addressed, they harm user experience and can even damage your SEO.

External links lead to your website from another. Since you don’t have direct control over them, any errors caused by external links can be difficult to deal with.

How to build a custom report for 404 errors from internal links

First, create a “New Custom Report in Google Analytics and select a “Flat Table” as a report type. The dimensions should be “Page,” “Page Title,” and” Previous Page Path,” while the metric should be “Unique Pageviews.”

Next, you want to make sure to see only errors triggered by navigating from internal pages on your website. To do this, you should add a filter that excludes the value “(entrance)” for the dimension “Previous Page Path.”

Finally, add another filter field that will identify your 404 page. It will check the title of the page for a unique identifier such as “404” or Page Not Found. This is an “Include” filter for the dimension Page Title.

When you save and open it, you’ll be able to see the URL that triggered the error, the page that links to the triggering URL, the title of your 404 page, and the number of times the error occurred.

How to build the report for 404 errors from external links

Same as before, open Google Analytics, create a New Custom Report, and select a “Flat Table” as a report type. Set dimensions as “Page,” “Page Title,” and “Full Referrer.” The metric should be “Unique Pageviews,” as in the previous report.

Now, unlike with the internal link 404 report, you want to see only errors triggered by an external page. So, set up a filter that includes the value “(entrance)” for the dimension “Previous Page Path.”

In the end, you should add a filter that identifies the 404 error page. As above, this is an “Include” filter for the dimension “Page Title.” It will check the title of the page for a unique identifier such as 404, Page Not Found, or whatever else is on your 404 error page.

This will generate the same report as the report for 404 errors from internal links.

How to Set Up Alerts for 404 Error Increase

While having a report about previous errors is good, setting up an alert that will notify you of new errors is better. This allows you to deal with them immediately and minimize user friction.

Here’s how to do it:

In Google Analytics, add a new segment. You can do this by clicking “+Add Segment” and then select “+NEW SEGMENT” from the list.

Name your new segment, go to “Conditions” and set up a condition that matches something unique to your 404 page template. You can simply go with a page title as the filter and use the title of your 404 page.

After you’ve saved your segment, you want to create a notification. Navigate to the admin panel and go to “Custom Alerts.” Click on “+New Alert” and choose the segment you created in the “This applies to” field.

You can configure the alert to suit your preferences. For example, when sessions increase by a certain percentage value over a specific period. It’s a good idea to start with a lower threshold and modify it as needed. You neither want to be swamped with alerts nor to miss important ones.

How to Check 404 Errors in Google Analytics 4

The steps above apply if you’re using the older version of Google Analytics (now known as Universal). However, Google has recently rebranded its App+Web analytics toolkit as Google Analytics 4 and started pushing it as the default on new accounts.

If you’re using Google Analytics 4, there are some differences but the basic principles are the same. Instead of “Behavior” and “Site Content,” navigate to “Analysis” and “Exploration.”

“Page Title” and “Page path + query string” need to be set up as dimensions, and metrics should be “Active users.” After that, drag “Page path + query string” to Rows and “Active users” to Values in the “Tabs” section. You can also select them by clicking on appropriate buttons if you find it easier.

The last step is to set up the filter. Use the same rule as in Google Analytics Universal: Page Title needs to contain a string that’s unique to the title of your 404 page.

Once you’re done, click “Apply,” and Google Analytics 4 will create the report about 404 errors.
How to Track 500 Errors in Google Analytics
Of course, 404 isn’t the only status code you should worry about. The 5XX range of errors can be harder to discover and pose an even bigger problem. The most common type is 500: Internal Server Error.

Server errors are much rarer and go unnoticed on a significant number of websites. Fortunately, you can use a custom 500 page that will contain a Google Analytics tracking code.

The process is fairly simple. If your host is running Apache, simply edit the .htaccess file by adding the following string:

ErrorDocument 500 /your-custom-500-error-page.html

If not, check with your hosting provider on how to set this up.

Once you’re done, follow the same steps as with 404 pages to track 500 errors.

PRO TIP: How to Monitor and Evaluate Your SEO Performance

If you want to understand how your visitors are behaving on your landing pages, there are several on-page events and metrics you can track from Google Analytics 4 and Google Search Console that will help:

• Organic clicks by queries. Which search queries generate the most clicks to your website?
• Organic clicks by page. Which pages receive the most clicks from search results pages?
• Organic sessions. How many organic search sessions does your website receive?
• Organic engaged sessions. How many website visitors were engaged with your content? An engaged session lasts longer than 10 seconds, has a conversion event, or has at least 2 pageviews or screenviews.
• Views per channel. Which channels generate the most views to your website?

And more…

Now you can benefit from the experience of our SEO and website conversion experts, who have put together a plug-and-play Databox template showing the most important metrics for monitoring your landing page performance. It’s simple to implement and start using as a standalone dashboard or in marketing reports!

You can easily set it up in just a few clicks – no coding required.

To set up the dashboard, follow these 3 simple steps:

Step 1: Get the template 

Step 2: Connect your Google Analytics 4 and Google Search Console accounts with Databox. 

Step 3: Watch your dashboard populate in seconds.

Try this template

404 Page SEO Best Practices

While 404 pages won’t affect your website’s performance, they aren’t great for user experience, and broken links might negatively impact your SEO if left unattended.

So here are some best practices on how to ensure your 404 pages have minimal negative consequences:

1. Explain what went wrong to the user — users appreciate transparency, and you’ll minimize the negative user experience.
2. Include a simplified sitemap that can help the user to navigate to where they want to be. Make sure to include resources that are being searched the most.
3. Include a link to your contact page or contact information to gather additional feedback from the users. This will make it easier to resolve any issues.
4. Make sure to include a unique string we talked about above — 404, Page Not Found, or something else. This will make it easier for you to track it in Google Analytics.
5. If it’s an external link, consider setting it to 301-redirect to another relevant page.
6. In the case of internal links, update all that redirect to non-existent pages or have typos.
7. If the page generated significant traffic to the site in the last 90 days, consider redirecting it.
8. If the URL shouldn’t exist, you can simply ignore it and create the SEO-friendly version of the 404 error page. Alternatively, you can submit a URL removal request in Google Search Console.

Automate 404 Error Reporting with Databox

It appears that 404 errors simply can’t be avoided. However, tracking them, analyzing reports, and fixing underlying issues can definitely minimize their negative impact.

Databox’s reporting tools be linked with Google Analytics and provide detailed and easy-to-understand reports. You won’t have to trawl through rows and columns; in fact, you’ll be able to design a fully customized dashboard that will show you all the relevant data in the intervals you want.

But that’s not all. Databox Alerts can notify you as soon as the error occurs, allowing you to fix that instance immediately. You can be notified via email, Slack, mobile push notification, or via the Insights stream, whatever is more convenient for you. Try out Databox for free today by signing up for a trial.

The post Google Analytics 404 Report: How to Monitor, Find and Fix 404 Errors in GA appeared first on Databox.