Introduction

Explorations is the incredibly powerful reporting feature within the new GA4 platform. It gives you a clearer overview of your site’s analytical data and allows you to dive deeper into that data to see what’s really going on. It blows the old Universal Analytics out of the water and comes with several options to customise the exploration as you need it.

Exploration 1 – Free Form Exploration

You may already be used to using the flat tables from previous versions of Google Analytics. The good news is, that this is still a possibility in GA4 and they have built in even more capabilities to enhance this feature.

Pivot tables and nested rows are just a couple of these added extras that you’ll find. But you can also use this tool to create visualisations such as line graphs, bar charts and others which can allow up to 4 comparison sets. An additional benefit of these new charts is that they are interactive. Simply hover your mouse over a data point and all of the corresponding data in other charts will be highlighted to allow you to compare the segments.

You can also explore any insights that are of particular interest. To do this, right-click on the data point and create a new segment for that condition. This creates a simple and natural way to follow the data.

Exploration 2 – Cohort Exploration

The Cohort Exploration feature is extremely useful for seeing how users behave over a certain period. Rather than pinpointing data at one moment in time, cohort analysis paints a much wider picture to help you understand your data. You can isolate various user groups by fixed demographics and study their actions a little further. See if they returned and performed a specific action again and again as they came back to visit over a course of days, weeks or months. This powerful analysis will prove invaluable from a future marketing perspective.

Exploration 3 – Funnel Exploration

Funnel reporting in the old Universal Analytics was limited to just 5 steps. The upgraded version in GA4 now allows for 10 to enhance the capabilities of this feature. The additional values include Begins With, Ends With and Contains to further separate the data and give far more precise results. Custom metrics are also possible using numerical operators such as > and >=.

To further inspect your site user behaviour, it’s also possible to set time limits between funnel steps. You don’t have to create different funnel tabs as you switch between open and closed funnels. And you are also able to incorporate these tabs into any Google Analytics reports as necessary.

Exploration 4 – Segment Overlap

Overlapping segments is a new tool unique to GA4. You can compare 3 user segments at a time to see how they relate to each other. And there are various options for you to choose from when creating segment overlap exploration.

Firstly, select up to three of the segments that you wish to compare and then move on to breakdowns. This is the dimension used to insert the breakdown data series for the table. Choose your starting row in the table and set up the rows that you wish to show. Finally, select up to 10 metric values to appear in the table.

Using the data produced in the segment overlap table, you’re able to discover any significant connections that are shared by various user groups. For example, you may want to see any common links between visitors that arrive directly via your desktop site versus those that come through their mobiles and others that arrive through paid campaigns. The segment overlap feature may just highlight some subtle connections that you have previously missed and can use to your advantage.

Exploration 5 – User Exploration

The User Explorer tool offers a more personalised dimension to your GA4 analysis. Effectively, it offers a breakdown of users by client or user ID for the conditions that are being reported.

Understanding this individual behaviour is useful for enhancing the user experience at your site as it helps you understand the steps that individuals take or any issues that they face. This will help improve the user experience long-term and is particularly useful when data is being analysed for patterns in conjunction with AI algorithms.

Not everybody will have access to this data though. You will need edit access to your GA4 analytics account.

Exploration 6 – Path Exploration

Path exploration is the ultimate tool for unlocking the secrets behind user movement at your website. Not everybody takes the same journey and not everybody has the same final goal. Using path exploration you can discover exactly how they get from A to B and any detours that appear along the way.

This essential data falls into various categories to show you things such as where the majority of users go from the homepage. Moreover, any looping journeys that could denote an issue with the site design or broken links for example.

You can follow paths as far as you need to. And when you’re ready to analyse another, simply select the point to where you want to return. You can then explore another as necessary. It’s simple, powerful and incredibly insightful.

Exploration 7 – User Lifetime

Knowing how users behave throughout their lifetime as a customer is essential for attracting the right business to your site or app. The insights that are created using the User Lifetime tool are varied and more poignant when used in conjunction with each other.

You can find out the campaign or source that sent users with the highest lifetime revenue compared to specific months. Discover campaigns that are bringing in users that will be more valuable with higher purchasing power. Also, discover unique behaviours to see when monthly active users purchased from your site or used the app.

Summary

The whole purpose of GA4 was to allow site owners to take control of their user data and understand it better. While Universal Analytics certainly went some way to achieving this, it went nowhere near as far as this new suite of tools from GA4. It may take a little getting used to but the rewards for doing so could prove invaluable for your business.