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How to Do Data Analysis in Google Analytics

Cody Schneider•

You have Google Analytics installed and you can see how much traffic you’re getting, but now what? Looking at numbers is one thing - turning them into insights that actually help you improve your marketing is a totally different ballgame. This guide will walk you through how to move beyond basic reporting and perform real data analysis in Google Analytics to understand your audience and grow your business.

First, Know Your Business Questions

Effective data analysis starts with questions, not reports. Before you even log in to GA4, think about what you’re trying to achieve. The goal of analysis is to get answers that lead to action.

Here are a few common business questions you can answer with Google Analytics:

  • Which marketing channels are driving the most valuable traffic (not just clicks, but actual conversions)?

  • Which pages on our website are doing the best job of engaging visitors?

  • Where are users dropping off in our checkout or sign-up process?

  • How does the behavior of mobile users differ from desktop users?

  • Are our paid ad campaigns actually leading to sales?

Keeping these questions in mind will give your analysis focus and prevent you from getting lost in a sea of data.

Mastering the Core Reports for Analysis

While GA4’s custom “Explore” reports are powerful, you can uncover a goldmine of insights just by skillfully using the standard reports. Here are the key reports and how to analyze the data within them.

Traffic Acquisition: Where Are Your Best Customers Coming From?

This report answers the fundamental question: "How are people finding my website?" But analysis goes deeper - it helps you find out which sources are bringing in high-quality traffic that converts.

How to Analyze This Report:

  1. Navigate to Reports > Acquisition > Traffic acquisition.

  2. The default view shows a table grouping traffic by "Session default channel group" (e.g., Organic Search, Direct, Paid Social).

  3. Look beyond just the "Users" and "Sessions" columns. Focus on columns like "Engaged sessions," "Engagement rate," and especially "Conversions."

  4. Sort the table by clicking the "Conversions" column header. This immediately shows you which channels generate the most valuable actions, not just the most traffic.

Example Insight: You might discover that "Organic Search" brings in 5,000 users with a 2% conversion rate, while "Paid Social" only brings in 1,000 users but has a 5% conversion rate. This tells you your social ad audience is highly motivated. With that insight, you could consider increasing your ad budget or creating lookalike audiences based on those converting users.

Pages and Screens: What Content Is Truly Performing?

This report tells you which pages people are visiting, but a smart analyst uses it to understand content performance and user intent.

How to Analyze This Report:

  1. Navigate to Reports > Engagement > Pages and screens.

  2. By default, it shows metrics like "Views," "Users," and "Average engagement time."

  3. Sort by "Average engagement time" to find the "stickiest" content. These pages are doing a great job of holding a visitor's attention. Can you see what makes them so engaging? Are they longer, do they have videos, or do they cover a topic in great detail?

  4. Conversely, look for pages with a high number of views but very low average engagement time. This could indicate a mismatch between what users expected to find (based on the Google search result or the ad copy) and what the page delivered.

Example Insight: You find that blog post "A" has thousands of views but users only spend 30 seconds on it. Blog post "B," on a similar topic, has fewer views but an average engagement time of over three minutes and drives a lot of "signup" conversions. This insight tells you to study blog post "B" to understand its structure, tone, and calls-to-action, then apply those learnings to improve blog post "A" and future content.

Intermediate Analysis Techniques in GA4

Once you’re comfortable with the core reports, you can get much deeper insights by layering on comparisons, secondary dimensions, and segments.

1. Adding a Secondary Dimension for Deeper Context

A secondary dimension adds another row of data to your report, allowing you to slice your information in more specific ways. This is one of the quickest ways to uncover powerful insights.

How to Use It:

  1. In any standard report table (like Traffic acquisition), click the small blue "+" icon next to the primary dimension header.

  2. A search box will appear. Select a second dimension to add to the table.

Practical Example: Let's combine what we've learned.

  • Go to the Traffic acquisition report.

  • Click the "+" button and search for "Device category."

  • Now your report will show you traffic sources broken down by mobile, desktop, and tablet.

You might find that traffic from "Organic Search" on desktop converts at a high rate, but the same traffic on mobile devices has a terrible conversion rate. That's a huge finding! It suggests a problem with your mobile user experience, like a hard-to-use checkout form on small screens.

2. Building Segments to Analyze Specific Audience Groups

Segments let you isolate a subset of your users to understand their unique behavior. Instead of looking at all users as one big monolith, you can analyze just mobile users, users from a specific country, or users who visited a certain page.

How to Create a Simple Segment:

  1. At the top of any report, click on "Add comparison."

  2. In the "Build new condition" section, use the "Dimension" dropdown to select a characteristic. For example, choose "Device category."

  3. In "Dimension values", check the box for "mobile." Click "OK" then "Apply."

GA4 will now show you data for your mobile audience side-by-side with data for all users. You can compare every metric, from which pages they visit most to which channels brought them to your site.

Example Insight: By putting a mobile user segment next to a desktop user segment, you might see that mobile users view more product pages but desktop users are the ones who complete purchases. This insight could inspire you to run a "Complete your purchase on desktop" email reminder campaign for mobile users who abandon their cart.

3. Using Funnel Exploration Reports to Find Drop-off Points

Ever wonder why so many people add an item to their cart but so few complete the purchase? A funnel report visualizes the steps a user takes to complete a goal and shows you exactly where they're dropping out along the way.

How to Build a Basic Funnel:

  1. Navigate to the "Explore" section in the left-hand menu and select "Funnel exploration."

  2. In the "Steps" section on the left, you can define your funnel. Click the pencil icon to edit.

  3. For an e-commerce checkout funnel, your steps might be:

    • Step 1: Event name is view_item (User views a product)

    • Step 2: Event name is add_to_cart (User adds an item)

    • Step 3: Event name is begin_checkout (User starts checking out)

    • Step 4: Event name is purchase (User buys the item)

  4. Click "Apply" in the top right. GA4 will render a bar chart showing the percentage of users who move on to the next step and, more importantly, the percentage who don't.

Seeing a huge drop-off between begin_checkout and purchase tells you there’s likely an issue on your checkout page itself. Maybe your shipping costs are a surprise, the page is confusing, or it's asking for too much information. Now you know exactly where to focus your optimization efforts.

Turning Your Analysis into Action

The final step is to translate your findings into business actions. An insight only becomes valuable when you do something with it. Here's a simple framework:

  • Insight: "Our pricing page has a high exit rate from mobile users but not from desktop users."Action: Review the pricing page on multiple mobile devices to check for layout issues, slow loading speeds, or buttons that are hard to tap.

  • Insight: "Traffic from our new partnership with XYZ blog is converting nearly twice as well as our other referral traffic."Action: Reach out to XYZ blog to explore more collaborative opportunities like a sponsored newsletter or a joint webinar. Find other similar blogs to partner with.

  • Insight: "Users who view our 'case studies' page are 5x more likely to convert into a lead."Action: Make the 'case studies' page more prominent in the main navigation. Add links to case studies on key service pages and within blog posts.

Final Thoughts

Data analysis in Google Analytics isn't about knowing what every single button does. It’s about being curious, asking smart questions about your business, and using reports, dimensions, and segments to find the answers. Start with simple questions and master the core reports, and you’ll be on your way to making data-driven decisions that push your business forward.

We know this process can be time-consuming, especially when the answers you need are buried across GA, your ad platforms, and your CRM. We built Graphed to remove this friction entirely. Instead of clicking through reports and adding dimensions, you can simply connect all your sources once and then ask questions in plain English - like "Which campaigns drove the most Shopify revenue last month?" - and get a real-time dashboard instantly. This turns hours of manual analysis into a 30-second task.