Leveling Up Your Ecommerce Analytics with GA4

Google Analytics 4, the latest generation of Google Analytics, continues to set – and raise –  the standard for digital marketing analytics tools. 

One of the most recent examples of how it is doing so is the introduction of ecommerce dimensions and metrics to the platform’s custom report and exploration report builders. 

That means you can now tailor your GA4 ecommerce and exploration reports to gain uniquely valuable perspectives on how your customers are engaging with and spending on your offerings. Previously, only standard ecommerce reports were available on the platform. 

These new reporting features – which you can use to build custom ecommerce reports from scratch or modify standard ones – are designed to help you achieve three key goals:

Enhance targeting and user experiences with a deeper understanding of customer preferences, promotional performance, and product associations.   

Doing so is now possible thanks to a wide range of ecommerce dimensions available in the custom report builder:

1. Item affiliation
2. Item brand
3. Item category
4. Item category 2
5. Item category 3
6. Item category 4
7. Item category 5
8. Item ID
9. Item list ID
10. Item list name
11. Item list position
12. Item location ID
13. Item name
14. Item promotion creative name
15. Item promotion creative slot
16. Item promotion name
17. Item variant
18. Shipping tier

Boost sales and customer satisfaction with optimization decisions backed by comprehensively tracked sales data and accurately identified revenue drivers.  

You can now unravel your revenue streams by using the following ecommerce metrics in your custom GA4 commerce reports:

1. Gross item revenue
2. Gross purchase revenue
3. Item refund amount
4. Item revenue
5. Items added to cart
6. Items checked out
7. Items clicked in promotion
8. Items purchased
9. Items viewed
10. Items viewed in list
11. Items viewed in promotion
12. Purchase revenue
13. Refund amount
14. Shipping amount
15. Tax amount

Laser-focus your revenue tracking and analysis for specific insights around ecommerce transactions.

GA4 exploration reports – which enable you to flexibly interact with and sift through your data to uncover information not readily visible in standard reports – are one of the platform’s most advanced features. 

When building them, you can now use these revenue metrics to gain valuable ecommerce insights:   

1. Gross item revenue (The total revenue from items only, excluding tax and shipping)
2. Gross purchase revenue (The total revenue from purchases made on your website or app)
3. Refund amount (The total amount from refunds given on your website or app)

Note: to avoid redundancy and ensure consistency, the duplicative revenue metrics of Ecommerce revenue and Event revenue have been removed from the Metrics picker in the GA4 exploration report builder. Exploration reports created with these old metrics will still be functional, but moving forward you should use the Purchase revenue metric when building ecommerce exploration reports or analyzing ecommerce revenue for optimal precision and access to current data.

If you aren’t already using GA4 – its enterprise-grade predecessor Google Analytics 360 is set to sunset in less than a year and standard Universal Analytics properties have already stopped processing data – these new ecommerce reporting capabilities are a great reason to start making the switch now. A deeper understanding of your ecommerce customers and a stronger stream of ecommerce revenue can be just a few clicks away. 

If you’d like any help or advice regarding ecommerce reporting in GA4 or any other aspect of working with the platform, my team and I are at your disposal!