Table of contents
About Google Analytics 4
Here are a few things we thought you'd like to know.
Pre-computed metrics
Google Analytics is among those marketing integrations that don't support importing raw data. The data you get from Google Analytics is already accumulated based on the time dimension (per hour, day, month, or year).
It means that you can't use the same time dimension to show accurate metrics for different time periods. If you import data with the time dimension Month, you should choose a widget's time period that looks at whole months, for example, Current month, Previous month, and so on.
Metric names
Your metric names must only contain letters, numbers, and/or underscores like so: user_conversion_rate_1. If you use any unsupported characters, you are likely to get receive a 400 error code.
Ads data
It is possible to link your Google Ads account to your Google Analytics account and import your Ads data into the Analytics data source. However, you can't use your Ads data together with the Hour time dimension in Analytics because Google Ads is only calculated once per day.
Secondary dimension – Source / medium
If you want to see where your data comes from, you need to set the secondary dimension to Source / medium in the advanced settings when setting up your data source.
How to integrate Google Analytics 4 with Plecto
Go to Data management > Data sources > + New data source > Google Analytics 4.
Click Next and sign in to your Google account.
Once signed in, Plecto will ask for access to your Google Analytics account. Click Allow. Don't worry – we only get read access to your Google Analytics data.
Open the Advanced settings and add the data source title, property, time dimension, and secondary dimension.
Title – Give your data source a title that reflects what data it contains. For example, Google Analytics - Country - Day. By adding a specific title, you will know that you've segmented your data by country, and the chosen time dimension is Day.
Property – Choose the property.
Time dimension – Choose one of the available time dimensions.
Secondary dimension – Select one of the 150+ dimensions. If you want to import another secondary dimension, create another Google Analytics data source.
Click Next to continue and import your data.
(Optional) You can create your first dashboard by selecting some of the pre-built KPIs we've made. Select the KPIs and click Create dashboard or skip this step and build your own.
Repeat these steps and create as many Google Analytics data sources as you need!
Secondary dimensions
With the new Google Ads 4 integration, we support all secondary dimensions (there are more than 150). If you choose a secondary dimension such as Campaign, Plecto will create one registration per campaign per time dimension (hour, day, month, year).
For more technical information, find the list of all the API dimensions & metrics on Google developer docs. If you want to see the list of field names and dimensions compared to the previous Google Analytics version, follow this link.
Time dimension
Google Analytics data sources require you to choose a time dimension. To get the most accurate metrics on your dashboard, you should match the widget's time period with your data source's time dimension.
For example, if your time dimension is Day, you should choose the time periods Today, Yesterday, or Tomorrow on the widget to get the most accurate metrics.
Here are the available time dimensions for Google Analytics 4 integration:
Hour
Day
Month
Year
If you want to track your metrics on a daily time period, you should select the time dimension Day when importing your data.
If you want to know, for example, how many users have visited your website each month, you should select Month.
KPI example – Average Bounce Rate
What is a bounce?
If a visitor goes to plecto.com and looks at our front page, integration page, and pricing page, that counts as 1 user, 1 session, 3 page views. However, if they visit our front page and leave, that counts as a bounce, since there is no trigger sent to the Google Analytics server.
How to create the Average Bounce Rate KPI
Open the formula editor and add a new data function component.
Lookup function – Avg
Data source – Choose your Google Analytics data source that contains your bounce rates.
Field – Session - Bounce Rate
Add the % sign in the suffix field. Plecto already receives a calculated bounce rate, so there's no need to change the number format.
Give your formula a title such as Google Analytics - Average Bounce Rate and save the formula.
Open a dashboard and add a widget of your choice.
Add your new bounce rate formula, select a time period, and save the widget.
You now have a beautiful bounce rate KPI that will update automatically whenever the data in your data source updates. 🎉
Is high bounce rate a bad thing?
The answer is – it depends. If the purpose of a page on your website is to inform, and people visit it to read for example an article or a blog post, then a high bounce rate is not necessarily a bad thing. In such case, it's more about how long the visitors stay on your page.
However, if your objective is to make the visitor engage with the website and make them navigate through the different pages and content, you would probably want to reduce the bounce rate.
Track your bounce rate with widgets and conditional colors
Visualize your bounce rate on number box, speedometer, table, or other widgets. Add conditional colors to see if your bounce rate is within norm or if it should be improved.