Best Google Analytics 4 report templates for marketing teams and agencies (2024)

What is a Google Analytics 4 report?

A Google Analytics 4 report is an interface tool that consolidates data from GA4 to track and display key performance indicators (KPIs) (e.g., user engagement, conversion rates, session duration), enabling teams to monitor website and app performance and create presentations for stakeholders. 

GA4 reports are typically built using flexible tools like Google Looker Studio or platform-specific solutions to enable high customization and integration of multiple data sources.

What to include in a Google Analytics 4 report?

An actionable GA4 report balances context and specificity based on the audience (executives, managers, and analysts) and their use cases.

Executive GA4 reports

Executive reports for CMOs, CEOs, and clients show the bottom-line impact of digital presence. Reviewed weekly, monthly, or quarterly, they include:

• ROI analysis: by channel, using attribution models for large budgets.
• User behavior analysis: session duration, bounce rate, user retention
• Cohort analysis: retention, engagement, and conversion by user cohort (sign-up period, acquisition channel)
• Add text for additional context to translate metrics for non-technical audiences. Present in slide decks and simplified Looker Studio reports.

Manager GA4 reports

Manager reports have cross-channel views with drill-downs to see performance by client, region, team member, and user journey. They help align teams, define tactics, and include:

• Cross-channel reporting: overall website or app performance across channels
• Goal tracking: compare current performance vs objectives
• Audits for prioritization and spotting issues 
• Competitive analysis for channel and tactic mapping
• User behavior and engagement research

Operational GA4 reports

Operational reports for analysts have granular, customizable KPIs to solve technical issues. Monitored hourly, daily, or weekly, they cover:

• Traffic analysis: source/medium, new vs returning users, session quality
• User engagement: events, page views, scroll depth
• Conversion tracking: goal completions, e-commerce transactions
• Site performance: load times, errors, user experience metrics

Operational GA4 reports are highly customized, built in flexible tools like Google Sheets or Looker Studio to enable data cleaning, blending, annotations, and integrating multiple sources.

How to build a Google Analytics 4 report?

To build a GA4 report, connect your data sources, choose a template on Looker Studio or Sheets, build your queries by selecting metrics and dimensions, choose charts to visualize your data, customize the report, design and share via link, PDF or email. 

Here’s the breakdown: 

Connect data sources

Define and connect the data sources to bring to your report. Common sources are GA4 for web analytics, CRM or E-commerce for sales data, and other relevant platforms.

To connect your data sources, go to portermetrics.com, choose the data sources to bring to your report. 

You can follow these tutorials on connecting your data:

• How to connect data to Google Looker Studio
• How to connect your data to Google Sheets

Choose a template

Choose from dozens of GA4 report templates in Google Sheets or Looker Studio, designed for use cases like user engagement monitoring, conversion tracking, and site performance. 

Learn to copy Looker Studio templates. 

While templates are the starting point. Make them specific for your business or agency. Map your specific metrics, especially custom events, CRM contact data, GA4 events, and all the fields and metrics that you define as "conversions" and "revenue".

Depending on your reporting tool—Google Sheets or Google Looker Studio, pick any of the dozens of templates created by our team and customers to solve your reporting use cases, such as user engagement monitoring, conversion tracking, and site performance. 

Select metrics, dimensions, and charts

Once your report template is downloaded, you may 1)modify it or 2) create a blank page to build it from scratch. Whatever the case, setting up a query always follows these steps: 

1. Select the data source and the account connected to it
2. Choose metrics (e.g., Users, Sessions, Conversions, etc.). 
3. Choose breakdowns to segment your data (e.g., by date, user type, device category, etc.)

You can follow these tutorials on adding data to your reports

• Calculated fields
• Charts
• Data blending
• Grouping and tagging

Design

To make your GA4 reports truly white-label you can add logos, colors, fonts, and styling to mirror your brand. 

Follow these tutorials to design your GA4 reports:

• Design reports on Looker Studio
• Best practices on designing reports

Share

Share your GA4 reports via links, PDF, schedule emails, and control permissions.

KPIs to include in a Google Analytics 4 report?

GA4 reports should include a mix of user engagement, conversion, efficiency, effectiveness, and performance metrics and KPIs to fully understand the performance of digital properties towards business goals. They include:

User engagement KPIs measure the interaction process, regardless of the channel: 

• Engagement metrics: sessions, page views, average session duration, bounce rate
• Conversion metrics: custom conversions, goal completions, transactions

Efficiency KPIs compare your outputs to the cost, including:

• Engagement: cost per session
• Conversion: cost per conversion

Effectiveness KPIs compare the input with the output from one stage to another

• Engagement: engagement rate
• Conversion: conversion rate

Performance KPIs show the impact of your digital presence:

• Users: new vs returning users
• Revenue: e-commerce revenue
• Efficiency: ROI, ROAS
• Effectiveness: average order value

To analyze these KPIs, segment them by:

• Channel: organic, direct, referral

• Time: Hourly, daily, weekly, monthly

• Campaign: funnel stage, objective

• Business: client, branch, region

• Audience: geo, tech, demographics, interests, behavior

• Content: page, event, topic