Google Analytics for business owners: 4 reports and done

The idea in one sentence

Analytics is the lantern outside your store

• Where they came from: the Traffic acquisition report (step 3).
• What they looked at: the Pages and screens report (step 4).
• What they did that matters: key events, like messaging you, filling out the form or buying (step 5).
• What's happening now: the Realtime report, covering the last 30 minutes (steps 2 and 6).
• Your task: open your Traffic acquisition report and translate your top 3 paths.

The menu paths, the channel names and what Analytics does come from the official Google Analytics Help, consulted in October 2026.

What to do with each channel, the advice and the order of the steps are Typers' judgment. The phone store is an example to explain the idea, not a real case. The drawings are ours.

Step 1 of 7

What Analytics is, and what it doesn't do

• Google Analytics is Google's tool that records what happens on your website: where people come from, which pages they look at and what they do. You connect it once with a tag and it starts taking notes. The standard version is free.
• What it tells you: which path each visit took (Google, a social network, an ad, an email), which pages they opened, how long each page held their attention and whether they did what matters to you: message you, fill out the form or buy.
• What it doesn't do: it doesn't tell you who each person is. According to Google, GA4 doesn't log or store IP addresses, and its policies prohibit sending it information that identifies someone: names, emails or phone numbers.
• What it can't do alone: it doesn't know what's important for your business. You mark that yourself, as a key event (step 5).
• Example: a store that sells phones sees 80 visits come from Instagram, with barely anyone getting past the homepage, and 20 from Google that go straight to the prices. Analytics doesn't give their names, but it does show which path brings people who ask about prices.

Heads up: The phone store is an example to explain the idea, not a real case. Its numbers are made up.

Step 3 of 7

Report 1 · Traffic acquisition, step by step

• 1. In the left menu, go to Reports.
• 2. Open Acquisition › Traffic acquisition.
• 3. At the top right, pick the date range: for example, the last 28 days.
• 4. Look at the table. Each row is a path, named by the Session default channel grouping: Organic Search, Direct, Organic Social, Paid Search and others.
• 5. Read three columns: Sessions (how many visits), Engaged sessions (the ones that stayed) and Key events (the ones that did what matters to you).
• 6. To see the detail (which network, site or campaign), change the table's dimension to Session source / medium or Session campaign.
• Your task: write down your 3 paths with the most sessions and how many key events each one brings. Then translate them with the tool below.

Heads up: Links you send on WhatsApp don't have their own channel. To see them by name, tag them with UTMs (step 7).

Got your report open? Translate your channels and write down your 3 paths.

Step 5 of 7

Report 3 · Key events: which to mark and how

• What it is: a key event is an action that's important for your business. Since March 2024, Google calls “key events” what Analytics used to call “conversions”; the word “conversion” stayed with Google Ads.
• Which to mark first (Typers' judgment): the WhatsApp click, the form submission and the purchase. Three, not twenty.
• How to mark it: Admin › Data display › Events. On the Recent events tab, click the star next to the event. Done: from then on it counts as a key event.
• The form: if submitting it takes the person to a thank-you page, create an event without code: + Create event › Create without code, choose page_view, paste that page's address and turn on Mark as key event.
• The WhatsApp click: enhanced measurement records every click on a link leaving your site as a click event (with the address in link_url), mixed in with all other outbound clicks. Ask whoever manages your site for a dedicated event for that button (for example, whatsapp_click) and mark it with the star.
• The purchase: if you sell online, your store should send the purchase event, the one Google recommends for sales. Mark it as key.
• To see the results, go back to Traffic acquisition: the Key events column tells you which path brings people who act.

Heads up: A new event doesn't appear in Recent events until Analytics processes it. Test it with Realtime (step 6).

Step 7 of 7

What to decide with what you see: where to put your money

• Compare paths by key events, not visits. The one that brings fewer people but more key events can be worth more.
• Lots of visits and few key events: before you pull money, see which page they land on (Landing page). Sometimes the problem is the door, not the path.
• Few visits and lots of key events: it's a candidate for more budget or more content, little by little, checking every week.
• Tag what you share: add utm_source, utm_medium and utm_campaign to the links in your social ads, emails and WhatsApp messages. Google has a URL builder to do it without code.
• Always look at the same range: compare 28 days with the previous 28. A single day misleads.
• Example: the phone store doesn't pull its money from Instagram right away. First it sends those visits to the prices page and measures for a month; then it decides.

Heads up: By default, Analytics keeps 2 months of detailed data for explorations (you can raise it to 14 in Admin › Data collection and modification › Data retention). The standard reports in this guide aren't affected.