Stop 08 · Marketing Analytics & DataTopics · 1/11

Google Analytics 4 (GA4) Fundamentals

In short

GA4 tells you what people actually do on your website or app, not what you hope they do. Learn its one big idea, events, and the rest of the tool makes sense.

Google's current web analytics platform, built around events rather than the older pageview-centric model — tracks user behavior across your site (and app) to understand traffic sources and behavior.

The blob sits at a small desk beside a cricket pitch, writing carefully in a big scorebook.

Think of it like this

The cricket scorer's book

A scorer writes down every ball: who bowled, who faced, how many runs, how the wicket fell. Later you can answer any question about the match. GA4 does that for your website. Every action is an event with details attached.

Watch it happen

One visit, recorded as events

Visitor

Site + tag

GA4

opens /products

1/6A visitor lands on your products page from an Instagram link.

The big ideas

What you need to know

Everything is an event

Page views, clicks, scrolls and purchases are all events. Each can carry parameters like value or page.

Key events

The events that matter to the business, like sign-ups or purchases. GA4 used to call these conversions.

Users and sessions

A user is a person (as best GA4 can tell). A session is one visit, made of many events.

Reports and explorations

Standard reports cover the basics. Explorations let you build funnels, paths and custom tables.

See it in code

Walk through the code

1gtag("event", "purchase", {2  transaction_id: "ORD-10293",3  value: 1499,4  currency: "INR",5  items: [{ item_id: "CHAI-BOX", item_name: "Masala Chai Box" }],6});

1/3A recommended event name GA4 understands for ecommerce reports.

A GA4 purchase event sent from the order confirmation page. Ecommerce platforms often send this for you.

Save yourself the pain

Common mistakes

Oops

Installing GA4 and never marking any key events.

Do this instead

Decide which actions matter and mark those events as key events on day one.

Oops

Expecting GA4 numbers to match ad platform numbers exactly.

Do this instead

Each tool counts differently. Look for consistent trends, not perfect agreement.

Your mission

Explore the GA4 demo account

~30 min

Quick check

In GA4, how is a 'Buy now' button click recorded?

Go deeper

1Set up (or explore a demo of) GA4 for a real or sample website.
2Learn the event-based data model and how it differs from older Universal Analytics.
3Practice building a basic report answering 'where is my traffic coming from?'