Google Analytics 4 is free, powerful and, for many business owners, confusing. It is full of reports, menus and metrics, and it is easy to log in, look at a graph and log out none the wiser.
The good news is that you only need a few reports to understand how your website is performing. Here are the five we suggest checking once a month, and the questions each one answers.
Before you start: set up key events
GA4 can tell you how many people visited, but the more useful question is how many did something valuable, such as sending an enquiry, calling you or making a booking. GA4 calls these key events (previously “conversions”). Make sure your contact form submissions, phone number clicks and other important actions are tracked and marked as key events, otherwise the reports below only tell half the story.
If you use WordPress, Google’s Site Kit plugin makes connecting Analytics and Search Console straightforward, and it can help with tracking common events such as form submissions.
1. Traffic acquisition: where are visitors coming from?
Reports → Acquisition → Traffic acquisition
This GA4 report breaks visits down by channel: Organic Search, Direct, Referral, Organic Social, Paid Search and so on. Look at which channels bring the most visitors and, more importantly, which bring visitors who complete key events. A channel with modest traffic but plenty of enquiries may deserve more attention than one with lots of visits and none.
2. Pages and screens: what are people looking at?
Reports → Engagement → Pages and screens
This shows your most-viewed pages. Use it to check that your important service pages are being seen, to spot blog posts that attract steady traffic and could link more clearly to your services, and to find pages that get attention you did not expect.
Photo by Vitaly Gariev on Unsplash
3. Landing page: where do visits start?
Reports → Engagement → Landing page
The landing page is the first page someone sees. This matters because it is your first impression. If a page is a common entry point but has low engagement or few key events, it is a good candidate for improvement, perhaps with a clearer headline, better proof or a more obvious call to action.
4. Key events: are visitors getting in touch?
Reports → Engagement → Events, or Key events
This is the report that connects your website to your business results. Track the total each month and compare it with the same month last year to allow for seasonal patterns. If enquiries fall while traffic stays steady, something on the site may be putting people off, or your form may have stopped working.
5. Tech overview: what devices do visitors use?
Reports → Tech → Overview
This shows the split between mobile, desktop and tablet, along with browsers and screen sizes. If most of your visitors are on phones, every design and content decision should be checked on a phone first. It is also worth comparing key events by device: if mobile visitors rarely get in touch, the mobile experience may need work.
Turning Google Analytics 4 numbers into actions
Reports are only useful if they lead to decisions. Each month, write down one or two observations and one action, for example “The pricing page is our second most common landing page but has the fewest enquiries, so we will add a contact form and a testimonial”. Over a year, these small improvements add up.
Analytics also works best alongside Google Search Console, which shows the searches people used to find you. Together they give a much fuller picture of how your website performs.
If you would like help setting up tracking properly or making sense of your reports, our team can help.
