What is Screen View in Google Analytics?

A screen view in Google Analytics is the mobile app equivalent of a page view. Understanding your screen view data is the key to seeing which app features your users love, where they get stuck, and how they navigate from point A to point B. This article will show you exactly what screen views are, how they differ from page views, and how to track and analyze them in Google Analytics 4.

Page Views vs. Screen Views: What’s the Difference?

While the terms are often used together, 'page view' and 'screen view' measure user interaction on two different platforms: websites and mobile apps. They are similar in concept but different in their technical triggers.

A page view is recorded when a user's browser loads a page on your website. Every time a new URL loads, a page view event fires. If you reload a page, that’s another page view. If you click a link and go to a different page, that’s also a page view. It is fundamentally tied to the loading of a distinct web page with its own URL.

A screen view, on the other hand, is recorded when a user views a specific screen within your mobile app. Unlike websites, mobile apps often don't have unique URLs for each different view. Instead, they have distinct screens, such as a home screen, a settings screen, a user profile screen, or a product details screen. The screen view event fires each time a user transitions to and views a specific screen.

An Analogy to Make it Clear

Think of it like this:

• A website is like a book. Each time you turn to a new page, that’s a ‘page view.’ It's a distinct, numbered piece of content.
• A mobile app is like a building. Each time you enter a different room - the lobby, an office, the conference room - that’s a ‘screen view.’ You aren't turning pages, you're moving between different functional spaces.

Here’s a simple breakdown of the main differences:

• Platform: Page views are for websites. Screen views are for mobile apps.
• Trigger: Page views are triggered by a new URL loading in a browser. Screen views are triggered by a distinct screen loading within an app.
• Metric Name: In GA4, both are unified under the term 'Views' in standard reports, but the underlying events are different (page_view vs. screen_view).

Why Tracking Screen Views is Important

Simply counting app installs doesn’t tell you much. It’s what users do inside your app that matters. Tracking screen views gives you the visibility you need to understand user behavior, improve your app's user experience (UX), and ultimately drive your business goals.

1. Understand User Journeys Inside Your App

Screen view data allows you to map out the common paths users take. Do most users go directly from the home screen to your ‘Shop’ screen? Or do they check their ‘Profile’ screen first? By analyzing these sequences, you can discover a user’s typical thought process and see exactly how they're moving toward conversion goals, like making a purchase or completing a sign-up form. This also highlights where users drop off, showing you the exact screens that may be causing them to leave the app.

2. Measure Feature Engagement

Your app is a collection of features, and each one is represented by a screen. A high volume of views on a particular screen is a strong indicator that users find that feature valuable. Conversely, if a key feature's screen has very low views, it might have a discoverability problem. Maybe the button to access it is hidden, or perhaps the feature isn't as compelling as you thought. This data helps you decide where to focus your development efforts - either by improving underused features or doubling down on what’s already popular.

3. Identify Points of Friction

Are users abandoning their shopping cart at the payment screen? Do you see a high number of users viewing the 'Help' screen immediately after trying to use a new feature? A high exit rate on a particular screen is like a red flag waving in your data. It points to a problem area that could be caused by bugs, a confusing user interface (UI), or a poorly designed user flow. Investigating these high-friction screens is a direct path to improving your app’s performance and user satisfaction.

How to Set Up Screen View Tracking in GA4

With Google Analytics 4, the best way to track app data is through the Google Analytics for Firebase SDK. The good news is that basic screen view tracking is largely automatic once you have it set up.

Step 1: Get Started with Firebase

Firebase is Google’s platform for building and managing apps. It integrates seamlessly with GA4. If you haven't already, you'll need to create a project in the Firebase console and link it to your GA4 property. During the GA4 setup process, you’ll be prompted to create a "Data Stream" for your app (iOS or Android), which will guide you through this process.

Step 2: Install the Firebase SDK in Your App

This part requires a developer's help. You’ll need to add the Firebase software development kit (SDK) to your app’s codebase. During setup in the Firebase console, you will download a configuration file (GoogleService-Info.plist for iOS or google-services.json for Android) and add it to your app's project files. Then, you'll add the SDK dependencies using the appropriate package manager for the platform (like Swift Package Manager for iOS or Gradle for Android).

Step 3: Leverage Automatic Screen View Tracking

Once the Firebase SDK is installed and your app is running, it will automatically start tracking screen views. Whenever a user moves to a new screen in your app, the SDK logs a screen_view event. This event comes with pre-populated parameters:

• firebase_screen: This is the name you give the screen.
• firebase_screen_class: This is the class name of the UIViewController (iOS) or Activity (Android) that is in focus.

Out of the box, GA4 will use the screen's class name - for example, ProductDetailViewController. While functional, these names aren't always clean or easy for marketers to read.

Step 4 (Recommended): Manually Set Cleaner Screen Names

For more readable and meaningful reports, your developer can add a small snippet of code to manually set a descriptive name for each screen. Instead of seeing ShoppingCartViewController, your reports can display "Shopping Cart."

This typically involves a single line of code in the section of your app that presents a new screen. The exact implementation varies by platform, but for example, you might place a command like this:

// Simplified example of manually logging a screen name
setCurrentScreen(name: "User_Profile_Screen")

By doing this, the custom name you provide will populate the firebase_screen parameter, making your analytics reports much easier to understand at a glance.

Where to Find and Analyze Screen View Data in GA4

With tracking implemented, you can start digging into the data inside your Google Analytics 4 property.

Using the 'Pages and Screens' Report

The primary report for this data is straightforward to find.

1. On the left-hand navigation pane in GA4, go to Reports.
2. Under the Life cycle collection, click on Engagement.
3. Select the Pages and screens report.

Inside this report, you'll see a table listing both your website pages and app screens together. By default, the primary dimension shown is "Page path and screen class." To see your cleaner, manually set names, click the small dropdown arrow on the dimension name and switch it to "Page title and screen name."

Look at these key metrics to understand performance:

• Views: The total number of times each screen was viewed. A simple measure of a feature's popularity.
• Users: The number of unique people who viewed each screen. Compare this to "Views" to understand usage frequency.
• Average engagement time: How long, on average, users actively had a screen open. An unexpectedly low time on a content-heavy screen might signal a problem.
• Conversions: How many of your key conversion events were completed on each screen. This is crucial for linking feature usage to business outcomes.

Build a Deeper Analysis with Path Exploration

To see how users navigate between screens, you can use the exploration reports.

1. On the left-hand navigation, click on Explore.
2. Choose Path exploration from the template gallery.
3. The report will start with 'Session start' by default. You can change this by clicking on the starting point node and choosing 'Screen name'. Select your home screen or another key starting screen.
4. From there, you will see a flow chart showing which screens users went to next. This is one of the best ways to visually trace user journeys and spot drop-off points in a funnel.

Final Thoughts

Screen views are the foundation of mobile app analytics. They provide the same crucial behavioral insights for your app that page views have long offered for websites. By mastering screen view data, you can build a deeper understanding of which features resonate most with your users, identify and fix pain points in their journey, and make data-driven decisions to improve your app.

Analyzing all this information in GA4 - while also trying to connect it to your ad spend, CRM data, and purchase history - can be overwhelming. At Graphed, we bring all your marketing and sales data into one place so you can get answers instantly. Connect your Google Analytics account, and you can simply ask questions in plain English, like "Show me a bar chart of my top 10 most viewed app screens from last month" or "What was the average engagement time on our checkout screen versus our home screen?". We automate the report-building so you can spend less time searching for data and more time acting on it.