As we all are aware that Universal Analytics is going to be out of commision soon. Therefore, we have either switched to Google Analytics 4 (GA4) or are in the processing of switching. GA4 is new and improved version of Analytics. Both the Analytics have a huge difference in their user interface. Hence, all the knowledge that we had previously to navigate around Analytics reports is useless now. We will have to get used to the new interface and learn to navigate our way around it. One of the major problems that people have been facing is the incomplete transactions report. Let us discuss this problem in detail and how you can create transactions report in Google Analytics 4 (GA4) reports.
Transactions Report in Universal Analytics vs Google Analytics 4 (GA4)
The interface of Universal Analtics has been given a complete overhaul in Google Analytics 4. Almost all the reports are differently placed, although the navigation has improved but we need to learn to move around these reports. One of the major issues that most of the Google Analytics 4 users have been facing is to navigate to the Transactions report. In Universal Analytics we used to have ‘Sales performance report’ under Conversions>Ecommerce which contains transaction Id and revenue information. With this report we were able to determine what transactions have reached the Analytics.
However, in Google Analytics 4 we have ‘Ecommerce Purchases‘ report under Monetization which contains transactions/purchase information. But the problem is it doesen’t contain the transaction ID so its very difficult to determine which transactions have reached GA4. We will have to manually create transactions report in Google Analytics 4.
Custom Reports in Google Analytics 4 (GA4)
To tackle the problem of missing transactions ID in moteziation reports we have explored the custom reports which gave us a solution in the form of creating our very own transactional report which can contain any Dimensions & metrics we want for eg:- transaction id, purchase revenue etc. We can create various custom reports to look at the data more clearly other than given reports that have been provided to us in the Analytics interface by default. Let us look at how you can create transactions report in Google Analytics 4 (GA4) using custom reports.
Create Transactions Report in Google Analytics 4 (GA4) using Custom Reports
Please follow the steps below to create transactions report in Google Analytics 4 (GA4) :-
Step 1:- Go to your Analytics container and go to Explore from the left navigation menu then click on blank.
Step 2:- Enter the name of report on the top left corner. We will name it as “Transactios Report”
Step 3:- Click on the plus sign in dimensions from the left menu then search for transaction ID and finally click import.
Step 4:- Similarly in metrics search and import ‘Purchase Revenue’.
Step 5:- Finally drag and drop transaction id in rows and purchase revenue in columns. The transaction report is now ready to be viewed.
Step 6:-Change the date range as per your need to view transactions report for the needed date range.
Conclusion
Today we learned how to create transactions report in Google Analytics 4 using custom reports and created our very own transactions report. Using this report we were able to map transaction ids to purchase revenue which gives a clear idea of what orders have been captured in Analytics thereby utilizing the full potential of custom reports. Similarly you can create various other custom reports using the wide variety of Dimensions & Metrics available.
