How to Create Custom Reports in Google Analytics 4 (GA4)

It's no secret that Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is not liked by many. The transition from Universal Analytics (UA) has been rocky, as GA4 not only introduced a brand new measurement model but an entirely new interface. But it doesn't have to be so hard, and I'm here to help! In this video, I'll show you everything you need to know about how to customize the GA4 interface and create custom dashboards and reports.
You can also read the step-by-step instructions covered in this video on my blog - bit.ly/3F0a9Xe
00:00 - Introduction
02:32 - Getting started
03:22 - Types of reports in GA4
04:31 - Editing Overview reports in GA4
06:02 - Editing Detail reports in GA4
08:49 - Customising charts
09:10 - Configuring scatter charts
12:48 - Creating custom cards
14:21 - Reports Library
14:45 - Managing report collections
16:35 - Creating new collections
17:42 - Creating new Detail reports
20:57 - Creating new Overview reports
23:27 - Wrap-up
This video is featured in my online course, Marketing Analytics Mastery, which can be found on Udemy. Enroll via this link for a discount - bit.ly/3Z7D4RO
You can also check out my other online courses:
An Introduction to Online Quantitative Market Research - bit.ly/3m8SnLw
The Complete Market Research Bootcamp - bit.ly/3rprcyZ
You can learn more about data analytics and market research on my blog, analythical.com/
And check out my latest blog post - How to Action Your Analytics Benchmarks Using The 20% Rule - bit.ly/3rr94Vs

[@martinakallin6933]

Been watching Googles academy videos to learn GA4 and learned (pretty much) nothing about how to use it. THIS taught me! THANK YOU! The only thing I missed is if the changes I make affect only my view in GA4, or every user in this GA account.

[@stephentracy]

Thanks, and my pleasure! And yes, any custom reports you create, or any changes you make to existing reports will be visible to all users of your GA property.

[@rolybouza7566]

Really insightful and clearly explained. Thanks so much.

[@SigKappel]

best video on custom reports! Thanks Stephen

[@stephentracy]

Thank you!

[@bamboo8212]

Great content! Keep up the good work!!! Thanks alot!

[@stephentracy]

Thanks for watching!

[@user-tc7ns8gr2w]

Amazing video dude. Wish more people would see it

[@stephentracy]

Thank you!

[@TroelsLundLaursen]

Great video! Thank you. Is there anyway to customize the overview cards (not overview reports)? Say eg. you want to add (or delete) another metric next to "New users" at the overview card shown at 2:45. Is that possible?

[@LeandroR99]

I believe it's not possible to save a report with a specific searched item, is it? Example Use case: I have a report of the events in my app. I want to filter out every event that starts with "practice_". If I save the report, everything is saved, except the search filter. Using the filter option doesn't show the option to filter out by event name

[@nischalr577]

Thank you for the informative video. So is there a way to edit the overview summary cards (The one with time series data with multiple metrics on the top, at the top of overview pages). Or create similar summary cards for my custom overview report?

[@stephentracy]

Thanks, and my pleasure. Regarding your question, I’m not quite sure if you’re referring to editing the "overview report" cards or the charts found at the top of the "detail reports", so I’ll cover both here. But the short answer is yes, there is some customisation that can be done (but it’s limited). 1) Editing charts in detail reports - You can customize the charts that appear at the top of a “detail report” via the right side menu (that appears when you're editing a report). So after you create (or edit) a detail report, look to the right side menu and scroll down to “CHARTS”. From here, you can change the chart type (i.e. line, bar or scatter) and you can choose whether to display 1, 2 or no charts. That’s basically it, it’s pretty limited. However, one question I get asked a lot is how to display a line chart that only shows a single line / data-series. By default, line charts will display a line / data-series for each attribute of the dimension selected (e.g. one line for each page on your site, etc) which can be frustrating. There’s a hacky way to solve this which is to use a dimension with only a single attribute. For example, try editing the report, click on Dimensions > add dimension and search for the dimension called “Year”. If your date range is within a single calendar year then the chart will only display a single line. Another dimension you can consider using is “Stream name” as this will only have a single attribute unless you’ve created multiple data streams under your property. 2) Creating custom cards for overview reports - Another option is to create custom cards, which are displayed on the “overview reports”. However, these are first created via the detail reports. To do this, got to Library > Create detail report, then add the metrics and dimensions you want. Once this is done, scroll to the bottom of the right side menu where it says “Summary cards” and click “Create new card”. From here you can create custom cards which have more visualisation options than the charts on the detail report. Once you create a card, you need to make sure that you add the detail report to a published report collection. Once that’s done, go and create an overview report, and you should be able to add your custom cards to it. I wrote a step by step article about this on my website as well, which you can view here: analythical.com/blog/custom-reports-in-google-analytics-ga4 I hope this helps, but let me know if you have any more questions.

[@stefanpeters5043]

Great video, thanks. How do you display data weekly?

[@stephentracy]

Thanks, glad you enjoyed the video On weekly charts, unfortunately you can’t change the granularity of charts in the Reports section at this time. But you can do this in the Explore table builder. I have a video and blog post on this coming out soon, but in the meantime here are the steps to follow: 1. Click on Explore from the left side menu 2. Click “Blank” to create a new data exploration 3. Under the “Variables” column, scroll down to “METRICS”. Click the + sign, then on the next screen you can use the search bar at the top to search for a metric (or metrics) that you want to add. Try searching for “sessions”, then check the box to the left of the metric and click Import (in the top right corner). 4. Now look to the “Settings” column. Under “VISUALISATION” click on the Line chart option (it will default to the table view). Once you choose line chart, you should notice some of the options in this column change. 5. Under “GRANULARITY” you can now select the desired chart frequency (i.e. hour, day, week, month). Since you’re interest in weekly data, select “Week” from the drop down list. Again, if you can’t see the “GRANULARITY” option it’s likely because you haven’t selected Line chart under “VISUALISATION” 6. Now scroll toward the bottom of the “Settings” column, and under “VALUES” select “Sessions” (or whatever metric you imported). 7. Now a chart will appear with your weekly data. Note that you can change the granularity any time if you want to aggregate up to monthly, or drill down to daily or hourly. 8. You can also add multiple time series to your chart by adding dimensions to the “BREAKDOWNS” section. I hope this helps. I’ll update this comment again when my video/blog post are ready. But for now, let me know if you have any further questions.

[@stephentracy]

Update: Here's a step by step article for changing chart granularity in GA4 @stefanpeters5043 analythical.com/blog/change-granularity-in-google-analytics-4 Hope this helps

[@andrewchadwick7415]

Thanks so much for this. Can you add custom explorations into a report? At the moment I have loads and they all just sit in "Explore". I'd like to add them to the cards or reports or something.

[@stephentracy]

Unfortunately no, at this time there's no way to bring your explorations into the standard reports. I also think it's unlikely Google will add this fucntionality becuase these tools leverage different types of data (i.e. Explore leverages user/event level data, while Reports leverage aggregated data). That said, I'm hopeful that the GA product team will roll out better organization and foldering features for explorations in the future, and perhaps some dashboarding functionality as well.