How To Create Custom Reports in Google Analytics (GA4)
It’s no secret that some people aren’t happy with Google Analytics 4 (GA4). The migration from Universal Analytics (UA) to GA4 has been anything but smooth, and it’s left a lot of people feeling frustrated, especially the more casual users of Google Analytics.
Yikes.
While GA4 introduces innovative features and an exciting new measurement model, it hasn't come without its share of trade-offs. And one of the biggest trade-offs, it seems, is ease of use.
One of the major pain points I’ve observed among users who migrated to GA4 is that many of the standard reports that came out of the box with UA have been stripped away. In some cases, even the most basic metrics and reports can be hard to find.
But there’s a silver lining: Although GA4 has trimmed down on pre-made reports, it offers a suite of report customization features and tools that give you the power to tailor your GA4 environment to the data and information you want to see.
So, let’s dive into the world of custom reports in Google Analytics 4 so you can get the most out of your clickstream data.
This article will take you through everything you need to know, step by step. But if you prefer to watch a video tutorial, you can check it out my video below.
Types of reports in GA4
The first thing you need to learn about is the type of reports that you can create and customize in GA4.
There are two types of reports: Overview Reports and Detail Reports.
Overview reports are a collection of data snapshots, which GA4 refers to as cards. The cards show one dimension and metric at a time and can display the information in different ways, from charts to tables. The areas outlined in red below are examples of cards.
Detail reports, on the other hand, provide more granular data. The structure of the detail report is somewhat fixed in that it can display up to two charts at the top of the report, and then a table below the charts with up to 12 metrics (i.e. columns).
When creating new collections and reports, I suggest that you start with detail reports first, and then you can create overview reports from these.
Creating report collections
Before we jump into creating reports, you need to understand collections. You can create and manage report collection by clicking Reports (in the left side menu), then Library (bottom left of the screen)
From here, you can create new collections of reports. Once these collections are published, they’re available on the left side menu.
Let’s start by creating a blank collection as a placeholder. Then we’ll create some detail and overview reports to add to it later.
Click Create new collection, then select Blank. From here, you can give your collection a name, and start creating topics which function like folders for your reports. Let’s say we want to create a collection that contains a number of reports about traffic sources. Name the collection “Traffic Sources,” then create a new topic called “Organic Search Traffic.” This topic will house some reports that we’ll create related to traffic exclusively from organic search.
Now save this collection and we’ll come back to it later to add some reports.
Creating detail reports
From the library landing page click Create new report, then Create detail report.
From here I recommend using one of the report templates provided. This is because I’ve found that not all of the dimensions seem to be available if you create a report from a blank template. For example, if you choose to create a detail report from a blank template, it seems that some of the dimensions, specifically those related to session source, medium and channel group are missing. This may be a bug, and it may be fixed by the time you read this. But for now, I’ve found it’s best to create a report using the templates. Since this report is based on traffic sources, you can select the Traffic acquisition template.
This will create a pre-populated report with a number of dimensions and metrics already added.
To customize the report click on dimensions, and add or remove more dimensions as needed. For now, let’s keep all the pre-populated dimensions but add a dimension for country. You can do this by clicking Add dimension and typing “country.” You can also change the default dimension selected when the report loads by clicking the three dots icon and selecting Set as default. Let’s change the default to country, then click apply to save your changes.
To customize the metrics, click metrics in the top right corner. These will appear as the columns in your chart, and the ordering of the columns (from left to right) will follow the order of the metrics in this list (from top to bottom). If you want to re-order the column, simply click and drag the metric to the new location.
Let’s add bounce rate to this table. Do this by clicking add metric at the bottom, then type “bounce rate.” If you don’t want so many metrics in the table, you can also remove them by clicking the X icon. Let’s remove total revenue, conversions and event count. When you’re done, click apply.
Now, we can customize the charts. There are currently three types of charts available which include bar charts, line charts and scatter charts. To change the chart, click on the arrow next to the chart name and select the chart type that you want. You can remove one or both charts by clicking the eye icon next to the chart name. I should mention that the chart customization is very limited, and you will have little control over how things look. For example, on line charts, you can’t control the granularity of time series data (e.g. daily, weekly, monthly, etc). And both line charts and pie charts will truncate to a max of five variables. Hopefully, the GA product team roll out more features for customizing charts in the future.
You can also apply filters to the report. Let’s say we only want this report to show data/visits from organic traffic. To do this, click add filter, type “session medium”, select exactly matches, and then choose organic from the list. This will now apply a filter to our entire report.
Lastly, from the detail report builder, we can also create cards. These function as data snapshots that can be added to an overview report. Start by clicking create new card in the bottom right corner.
From here, you can add dimensions and metrics to your card, and you’re not limited to just one. By adding multiple dimensions or metrics to a card, you will be able to toggle these when accessing the overview report later. However, the dimensions and metrics available from this view are limited to those added to the detail report. So, if you don’t see a specific dimension or metric that you want, click the X icon and go back to the previous screen to add them.
Let’s create a new card that shows users by country. Under dimensions, select country, then under metrics, select users. You can add filters if needed, but note that any filters created for the detail report will carry over to this card by default. Since we’ve filtered this report by organic traffic only, this card will show us organic traffic volume by country. Next, under visualization, choose the option for a table and then click apply.
Now you can save your detail report. I suggest giving it some kind of unique naming convention (e.g. Custom) because it can be challenging to find in the collections manager later if you’ve created a lot of custom reports.
Next, we’ll create an overview report. But in order to access the cards we created in our detail report, the detail report needs to be added to a published collection. To do this, navigate to the new collection you just created (i.e. Traffic Sources) and click edit collection. Locate your newly created detail report on the right side pane, then click and drag it to the relevant topic in the left side pane. Once that’s finished, you can click save changes to current collection.
Creating overview reports
From the library landing page, click Create new report, then Create overview report, then click add cards. You’ll notice that the cards explorer is organized by the report collections. Locate the collection you created (Traffic Sources), and from here you should see the custom cards created in the last step. If you don’t see it, this is likely because either 1) the collection has not been published or 2) the detail report (from which you created the card) has not been added to the collection. Both of these steps need to be fulfilled in order for you to see the custom cards you’ve created.
Try adding your custom card, as well as any other cards you like to this report. You can also re-order them using the right side pane if needed. When you’re done click save and give your report a name.
The final step is to add this new overview report to a collection. Locate the collection called Traffic sources and click edit collection. On the right side pane, click the column header named overview reports. Once located, click and drag the report over to the relevant topic on the left side pane. Remember that you can only add one overview report per topic, but you can add multiple detail reports.
Conclusion
I won’t lie, the process for creating new collections and custom reports isn’t the most intuitive, particularly the process of creating cards and adding them to overview reports. What’s more, options for data visualization are limited.
But, with a little time and effort, you’ll get the hang of it. Customizing the GA4 reports and interface is well worth the effort, as it will ensure the metrics and reports that are most relevant to you are at arms reach. And once you get over the learning curve, you can fully tailor your GA4 reporting environment to your needs, so you can spend less time searching and more time analyzing.
Good luck!
