About this video

• Video Title: Why GA4 ‘Out of the Box’ Sucks (And How to Fix It with Custom Definitions)
• Channel: MeasureU
• Speakers: Josh Silverbower, Jeff
• Duration: 48:24

Overview

This video discusses the limitations of Google Analytics 4 (GA4) "out of the box" and provides solutions for enhancing its functionality through custom definitions. The speakers emphasize the need for customization to align GA4 with specific business needs, contrasting it with the more universal approach of Universal Analytics. They explain what custom definitions are, why they are valuable, and demonstrate how to implement them using GA4's interface and Google Tag Manager.

Key takeaways

• GA4's "Out of the Box" Limitations: GA4, unlike Universal Analytics, offers limited functionality by default, requiring users to customize it to extract meaningful data. It provides only about 20% of the desired functionality, leaving the rest to the user to build.
• The Power of Customization: Custom definitions (dimensions, metrics, and calculated metrics) allow users to tailor GA4 to their specific business and answer critical questions, making the data more valuable.
• Event Tracking Context: While GA4 automatically tracks some events (like outbound clicks or video plays), it often lacks crucial context (e.g., what was searched, which video was played) unless custom definitions are implemented.
• Types of Custom Definitions: GA4 offers custom dimensions (event, user, item scope), custom metrics, and calculated metrics, providing various ways to enrich data.
• Proactive Implementation: Custom definitions are proactive, meaning data collection starts from the moment they are defined. It's crucial to set them up before or as soon as possible to avoid missing historical data.
• Importance of a Measurement Plan: A well-defined measurement plan, outlining business objectives, website goals, and KPIs, is essential for guiding the implementation of custom definitions and ensuring the tracked data is valuable and not overwhelming.
• Google Tag Manager for Customization: Google Tag Manager is a key tool for implementing custom tracking and sending custom parameters downstream to GA4, which can then be established as custom dimensions.
• Beyond GA4 Interface: While GA4 is a powerful data structure, its visualization capabilities are limited. Users often export data to tools like BigQuery or Looker Studio for more advanced analysis and dashboarding.
• Focus on Business Questions: The primary goal of implementing custom definitions should be to answer specific business questions and gain actionable insights, rather than tracking everything possible.

The video discusses several ways to customize GA4:

• Custom Dimensions: These allow you to add specific attributes or details to your events, users, or items that aren't tracked by default. For example, tracking the "video title" or "video URL" for a video play event, or the "search term" used on a website. They can be set at an event, user, or item scope.
• Custom Metrics: These are used for numerical data that isn't standard in GA4. An example given is creating custom scroll metrics for different scroll depths (25%, 35%, 50%, 75%, 100%) to calculate an average scroll depth per page.
• Calculated Metrics: These allow you to create new metrics by combining existing ones using formulas (e.g., sum, division, subtraction). An example is calculating a "cart to checkout rate" by dividing the "add to carts" metric by the "begin checkout" metric.
• Custom Events and Parameters: While not strictly "custom definitions," the video emphasizes that you can build custom events (like "game card click") and send additional parameters with them (like "click text" and "click URL") to provide rich context, which can then be registered as custom dimensions.
• Utilizing Google Tag Manager: The video demonstrates how to use Google Tag Manager to capture specific user interactions (like clicking on a game card) and send that data as custom event parameters to GA4. These parameters can then be set up as custom dimensions.

Here are the specific customizations shown for Custom Dimensions/Definitions and Custom Metrics in the video:

Custom Dimensions / Definitions:

• Video Title: This was set up as an event-scoped custom dimension. The purpose was to add context to the video_start event, allowing users to see which video was being watched.
• Video URL: Similar to Video Title, this is an event-scoped custom dimension to capture the URL of the video that was played.
• Search Term: Mentioned as an existing parameter that can be made available as a custom dimension, this is crucial for understanding what users are searching for on a website.
• Click Text: Demonstrated using Google Tag Manager, this is an event-scoped custom dimension captured when a user clicks on an element. It records the text of the clicked element.
• Click URL: Also demonstrated using Google Tag Manager, this is an event-scoped custom dimension that captures the URL of the clicked element.
• Game Name (Implicitly from Click Text): While the event was named "Game Card Click," the actual captured parameter was click_text which, in this specific context, represented the name of the game card clicked. This is an event-scoped custom dimension.
• User ID: Mentioned as an example of user-level data that can be captured. This would be a user-scoped custom dimension.
• Industry/Revenue Range (from forms): These are examples of potential user-scoped custom dimensions that could be collected from user forms to categorize users.
• Number of Purchases (from e-commerce): An example of a user-scoped custom dimension for e-commerce sites.

Custom Metrics:

• Custom Scroll Metrics: The speaker described creating custom metrics for different scroll depths (e.g., 25%, 35%, 50%, 75%, 100%). The intention was to then use these to calculate an average scroll depth per page, which is more insightful than the default 90% scroll trigger. These are treated as numerical values to allow for averaging.

The video emphasizes the critical importance of a Measurement Plan as the foundational step before implementing any GA4 customization, particularly custom definitions.

Importance of a Measurement Plan:

• Guides Customization: It dictates what should be tracked and why. Without a plan, you risk tracking too much irrelevant data or missing crucial insights.
• Answers Business Questions: The plan should start by identifying core business objectives and the specific questions that need answering. Customizations should directly support answering these questions.
• Provides Structure: It helps organize which parameters are associated with which events, preventing confusion and ensuring data consistency. The speaker highlighted that GA4 itself doesn't inherently link parameters to specific events unless you define them.
• Prevents "Analysis Paralysis": By focusing on what's valuable, a measurement plan helps avoid overwhelming yourself with too much data, which can lead to inaction.
• Foundation for Reporting: The plan dictates the KPIs and metrics needed, which in turn informs how data should be collected and customized for reporting and dashboarding.
• Long-Term Value: Customizations are proactive and data is not retroactive. A plan ensures you are setting up tracking correctly from the start to capture valuable historical data.

How to Make One (as described in the video):

While the video doesn't go into a step-by-step tutorial on how to create a formal document, it outlines the key components and thought process:

1. Start with Business Objectives: Understand the overarching goals of the business. What does success look like?
2. Define Website Goals: How do the website's actions contribute to the business objectives? What specific actions do you want users to take on the site?
3. Identify Key Performance Indicators (KPIs): What metrics will tell you if you are achieving your website goals and, by extension, your business objectives?
4. Determine Necessary Events and Parameters: Based on the KPIs and goals, what specific user interactions (events) need to be tracked? What additional context (parameters) is needed for each event to make it meaningful and answer the "why" behind the action?
   • The speaker gave an example: If a business goal is to understand user engagement with content, a website goal might be "video consumption." The KPI could be "average watch time" or "completion rate." This would lead to tracking the "video play" event and needing parameters like "video title," "video URL," or "current time."
5. Document Everything: The video strongly suggests having an "offline resource," like a spreadsheet, to document these events and their associated parameters. This serves as the blueprint for your GA4 implementation.

The essence is to reverse-engineer your data needs from your business goals, rather than just tracking everything available and hoping to find insights later.

The video doesn't provide a direct, step-by-step guide on how to start with business objectives, as it's more of a strategic starting point than a technical GA4 implementation step. However, based on the context of the discussion, here's how you can interpret and approach starting with business objectives for analytics and measurement:

1. Identify the Core Purpose of the Business/Website:

   • For a company: What is the company trying to achieve in the market? Is it to sell products, generate leads, build brand awareness, provide information, foster a community, etc.?
   • For a website: What is the primary function of this website? Is it an e-commerce store, a blog, a service provider's landing page, a news portal, a SaaS platform's dashboard, etc.?

2. Determine High-Level Goals:

   • Think broadly: What are the ultimate outcomes the business or website aims for?
   • Examples:
     • E-commerce: Increase revenue, grow customer base, improve average order value.
     • Lead Generation: Generate a certain number of qualified leads per month, increase conversion rates for contact forms.
     • Content/Media: Increase readership, grow subscriber base, improve engagement (time on page, shares), drive traffic to specific content.
     • SaaS: Increase user acquisition, improve customer retention, drive feature adoption, reduce churn.
     • Brand Awareness: Increase website traffic, improve brand mentions, drive engagement with brand content.

3. Consider Stakeholder Perspectives:

   • Who are the key decision-makers or stakeholders? What are their primary concerns and objectives related to the business or website?
   • For example: The Head of Sales might care most about lead quality and conversion rates, while the Head of Marketing might focus on traffic acquisition and brand visibility. The CEO will likely focus on overall revenue and market share.

4. Define "Success" in Measurable Terms (even if broadly at first):

   • For each high-level objective, ask: "How will we know if we are succeeding?"
   • Initial thoughts might be qualitative: "We want to be more popular," "We want more customers," "We want people to know about us."
   • Translate these into more concrete business terms: "More customers" could mean "increase the number of new paying customers by X% per quarter." "More popular" could mean "increase monthly active users" or "increase positive brand mentions."

5. Prioritize Objectives:

   • Often, there will be multiple objectives. It's important to understand which are the most critical. Which objectives, if achieved, would have the biggest positive impact on the business?
   • This prioritization helps focus the subsequent steps of defining website goals and KPIs.

In essence, starting with business objectives is about understanding the "why" behind the existence and operation of the website or business. It's about clarifying what the ultimate desired outcomes are before you even think about how to measure them. The video uses this as the bedrock upon which all other measurement strategy is built.

The video emphasizes "Focus on Business Questions" as a core principle for effective GA4 implementation and customization. Here's a breakdown of the steps and information related to this concept:

The Importance of Focusing on Business Questions:

• Drives Value: The primary reason for using analytics is to gain insights that help improve business performance. If you don't know what questions you need answered, your data collection efforts will likely be unfocused and yield little real value.
• Defines What to Track: Instead of trying to track everything, knowing your questions tells you specifically what data is needed. This prevents data overload and "analysis paralysis."
• Ensures Proactive Measurement: It helps you set up your tracking (especially custom definitions) with a clear purpose, knowing why you're collecting certain data points.
• Connects Data to Outcomes: It bridges the gap between raw data and actionable business intelligence by ensuring the data collected directly supports answering critical questions.
• Empowers Decision-Making: When you have data that directly answers your business questions, you can make more informed and confident decisions.

Steps to Focus on Business Questions:

The video implies a process that starts with strategy and moves towards technical implementation:

1. Identify "The Why": Before setting up any tracking, ask:

   • "Why are we collecting this data?"
   • "What outcome do we want to achieve?"
   • "What business questions are we trying to answer?"

2. Brainstorm Key Business Questions:

   • Think from the perspective of different departments or roles:
     • Sales/Revenue: "What marketing channels are driving the most valuable customers?" "Which products are most frequently added to cart but not purchased?" "What is the conversion rate from lead to customer?"
     • Marketing: "Which campaigns are most effective in acquiring new users?" "Where are users dropping off in the marketing funnel?" "What content resonates most with our target audience?"
     • Product/UX: "Which features are users engaging with most?" "Where are users encountering friction on the site?" "What search terms are users using when they can't find what they need?"
     • Content: "Which articles are driving the most engagement?" "What topics are users searching for that we don't cover?"
   • The video uses examples like: "Are there certain games that people are more interested in?" (for a streamer's website) or "Where are people leaving our site?" (for outbound link clicks).

3. Prioritize Questions:

   • Not all questions are equally important. Focus on the ones that, if answered, would have the biggest impact on the business objectives.
   • The 80/20 principle is mentioned: "20% of the things you could track will actually give you 80% of the things you need." Identifying the "critical few" questions is key.

4. Translate Questions into Data Needs:

   • For each prioritized question, determine what specific data points (events, parameters, metrics) are required to answer it.
   • Example: If the question is "Which games are users clicking on most?", you need to track:
     • Event: A click on a game card.
     • Parameter (Custom Dimension): The name of the game clicked (e.g., "game name" or derived from "click text").
     • Parameter (Custom Dimension): The URL of the game (e.g., "click URL").

5. Plan the Implementation:

   • Once you know the data you need, you can then plan how to collect it using GA4's features, such as custom dimensions, custom metrics, or custom events, often configured via Google Tag Manager.

6. Iterate and Refine:

   • As business objectives evolve or new questions arise, revisit your measurement plan and adjust your tracking accordingly. Analytics is an ongoing process, not a one-time setup.

In essence, focusing on business questions means starting with the outcome you desire and working backward to determine the data required to achieve that outcome. It's about being purposeful rather than reactive in your analytics strategy.