Can FullStory Be Used Alongside Google Analytics?

Thinking about using FullStory with Google Analytics? You're on the right track. This combination instantly connects the dots between what your users are doing on your site and why they're doing it. This article explains how these two platforms work together, how to integrate them, and provides practical workflows to start uncovering powerful insights immediately.

What Google Analytics Tells You: The "What"

Google Analytics (GA) is the industry standard for quantitative analysis - it gives you the bird's-eye view of your website traffic. It excels at answering "what" questions at scale:

What are my most popular pages?
What is my overall conversion rate this month?
From what sources is my traffic coming (e.g., Organic Search, Social, Paid)?
What is the bounce rate on our new landing page?
What percentage of our users are on mobile devices?

Think of GA as a map of a city. It can show you which roads have the most traffic, where the major intersections are, and where cars seem to get stuck in traffic jams (high exit rates). You see the large-scale patterns and trends, helping you spot potential problem areas or opportunities. However, the map can't tell you why a specific driver decided to turn left or why there's a backup on a particular street. For that, you need to see things from the driver's perspective.

What FullStory Tells You: The "Why"

FullStory provides the qualitative context that GA lacks. It focuses on the individual user experience by recording user sessions, allowing you to watch pixel-perfect replays of exactly what people do on your site. This lets you answer the "why" questions that quantitative data can't resolve:

Why are users abandoning their shopping carts on the shipping page?
Why are mobile users struggling to navigate our main menu?
Why are visitors rage-clicking on an image that isn't a button?
Why did that specific user report a bug our developers can't replicate?

FullStory is like having a co-pilot sitting next to every one of your users. You can see their mouse movements, clicks, scrolls, and typing. FullStory even automatically detects signs of user frustration, like "Rage Clicks" (repeatedly clicking an element), "Dead Clicks" (clicking on something that does nothing), or confusing error messages. It gives you the granular, user-level detail you need to understand the human experience behind the numbers.

GA4 + FullStory: Analyzing User Behavior Holistically

When you use Google Analytics and FullStory together, you get the complete picture. GA flags a problem at scale, and FullStory shows you the reason behind it. This synergy is a powerful catalyst for improving user experience and boosting conversion rates. You move from making educated guesses based on metrics to making confident decisions based on observable evidence.

Here are a few common scenarios where combining the two platforms is transformative:

The Mystery Drop-Off: Your GA4 funnel report shows a massive 70% drop-off between the "Add to Cart" and "Begin Checkout" steps. Is the "Checkout" button broken? Confusing? Hard to find? You can filter for sessions in FullStory that include an "Add to Cart" event but not a "Begin Checkout" event. Watching a handful of these session replays will likely reveal the exact friction point in minutes.
The Underperforming Landing Page: GA4 data shows that traffic from your latest Facebook Ads campaign is landing on the page but has a terrible conversion rate. Are the ads misleading? Is the page loading poorly? Integrating GA4 and FullStory allows you to pinpoint those specific session replays from that campaign. You might discover users are scrolling right past your main call-to-action or getting distracted by an unhelpful pop-up.
Segment-Specific Behavior: Google Analytics might reveal that users on Safari browsers from Canada convert at half the rate of other users. This is an interesting data point, but it's not actionable on its own. By filtering for that exact segment in FullStory, you can see how the site renders specifically for them. Maybe a key CSS element is broken in Safari, making a form unusable for an entire segment of your audience - a problem you would never have spotted otherwise.

How to Integrate FullStory with Google Analytics 4

Connecting FullStory to GA4 is straightforward and lets you access FullStory session replay links directly within your GA4 reports. Here’s how to set it up.

Step 1: Ensure Both Scripts are Installed

First, make sure that both your GA4 tracking code and your FullStory data capture snippet are installed correctly on all pages of your website. Most modern tag management tools like Google Tag Manager make this easy.

Step 2: Enable the Integration in FullStory

Click on Settings > Integrations > Manage.
Find Google Analytics in the list of available integrations.
Toggle the integration to On.

Once enabled, FullStory will automatically begin sending a custom event to GA4 at the start of each recorded session. This event, named <code>fullstory_url</code>, carries a crucial piece of information: the direct URL to that specific session's replay in FullStory.

Step 3: Create a Custom Dimension in Google Analytics 4

GA4 will receive this event, but it doesn’t know what to do with the session replay URL until you tell it. You need to register it as a custom dimension so you can use it in your reports.

Log in to your Google Analytics 4 property and go to the Admin section (the gear icon in the bottom-left).
In the "Data display" column, click on Custom definitions.
Under the "Custom dimensions" tab, click the Create custom dimensions button.
Fill out the fields as follows:
- Dimension name: FullStory Session URL (You can name this whatever you like, but be descriptive).
- Scope: Event
- Event parameter: fullstory_session_url (This must match the parameter name sent by FullStory exactly).
Click Save.

That's it! It can take 24–48 hours for new data to populate with this custom dimension, but once it does, you'll be able to add the FullStory Session URL to any of your GA4 explorations and see the replay link for each session.

Practical Workflow: Finding Session Replays in GA4

Once the integration is collecting data, you can build powerful reports. Let's walk through the most common use case: diagnosing a high exit rate on a pricing page.

Step 1: Open an "Exploration" in GA4

The standard GA4 reports don't allow for the same level of flexibility as custom "Explorations." In your GA4 property, go to Explore in the left-hand navigation and start a new Free-form exploration report.

Step 2: Add Your Dimensions and Metrics

In the "Variables" column of your Exploration, you'll need to import the dimensions and metrics you want to analyze. Click the "+" icons to add the following:

Dimensions: Page path and screen class and your newly created FullStory Session URL.
Metrics: Sessions and Exits.

Step 3: Build the Report

Drag your dimensions and metrics from the "Variables" panel into the "Tab Settings" panel:

Drag Page path and screen class and FullStory Session URL to the Rows section.
Drag Sessions and Exits to the Values section.

Step 4: Filter to the Problem Page

Your table will show every page on your site. To narrow it down, drag the Page path and screen class dimension down to the Filters section at the bottom. Set the filter to "exactly matches" and enter the path of your problem page (e.g., /pricing).

Step 5: Analyze the Results and Watch Replays

You now have a list of all recorded sessions for users who visited your pricing page, along with a direct link to each of their replays in FullStory. The table will contain clickable links in your FullStory Session URL column. Just click any of these URLs to be taken directly to FullStory, where you can watch the entire user journey. After watching a few sessions, you'll likely uncover the reason for the high exit rate - perhaps an unclear pricing tier, a confusing feature comparison, or a broken link to your support page.

Final Thoughts

Combining the quantitative reach of Google Analytics with the qualitative depth of FullStory eliminates ambiguity from your analytics. GA shows you what's happening on a macro level, helping you pinpoint where to focus your attention, while FullStory provides the undeniable video evidence needed to understand why it's happening, so you can confidently roll out fixes that improve your site for real users.

Putting all your data together can feel like herding cats. You're constantly jumping between dashboards to connect insights from Google Analytics, your ad platforms, your e-commerce store, and more. At Graphed, we help you simplify that process. We let you connect dozens of marketing and sales data sources into one unified platform. Instead of wrestling with data exports or building complex BI dashboards, you can use Graphed to simply ask questions in plain English and get real-time dashboards and reports, so you can spend less time wrangling data and more time acting on it.