How to Analyze Google Analytics

Google Analytics is flooded with data, but finding clear answers can feel overwhelming. You have access to hundreds of reports, metrics, and dimensions, yet figuring out what’s actually working on your website often seems just out of reach. This guide cuts through the noise and provides a simple, practical framework to help you analyze your Google Analytics data and find actionable insights to grow your business.

Start with the "ABCs" of Analytics

To avoid getting lost in endless reports, it helps to have a mental model for how your website functions. The best one is the "ABC" framework: Acquisition, Behavior, and Conversion. Every meaningful insight you'll find in Google Analytics comes from understanding the relationship between these three stages.

• A is for Acquisition: How do users get to your website? This covers all your traffic sources - organic search, paid ads, social media, email newsletters, direct visits, etc.
• B is for Behavior: What do users do once they are on your site? This includes which pages they visit, how long they stay, what they click on, and their general journey through your content.
• C is for Conversion: Are users accomplishing the goals you’ve set? This tracks valuable actions, like making a purchase, filling out a form, signing up for a newsletter, or downloading a resource.

Don't analyze these in a vacuum. The real power comes from connecting them. For example, which acquisition channel brings in traffic that has the best behavior (e.g., engages with multiple pages) and the highest conversion rate?

Key GA4 Reports for Your Analysis

While Universal Analytics had a more rigid structure, Google Analytics 4 is more flexible. This can be intimidating, but it also means you can focus on a few core reports that give you 80% of what you need. You'll find most of these under the Reports > Life cycle tabs.

1. Analyzing Acquisition: Where Does Your Traffic Come From?

Report to Use: Acquisition > Traffic acquisition

This is your home base for understanding how people find you. It breaks down your traffic by default channel groupings like Organic Search, Direct, Paid Search, and Social.

What it tells you:

This report answers the fundamental question: "Which of our marketing channels are actually working?" It shows you not just how many users each channel brings in (volume) but also the quality of that traffic by including metrics like engaged sessions, engagement rate, and conversions.

Questions you can answer:

• Which channel drives the most overall traffic? (Sort by Users)
• Which channel drives the most engaged traffic? (Sort by Engagement rate)
• Which marketing efforts are leading to the most sales or sign-ups? (Sort by Conversions)
• Is that expensive Google Ads campaign bringing in visitors who actually convert?
• Do our content marketing efforts (Organic Search) attract an audience that spends time on the site?

Pro Tip: Click the small pencil icon (Edit comparisons) at the top of the report to add a filter. For example, you can filter to only see traffic from "Mobile devices" to understand which channels are most effective for your mobile audience.

2. Analyzing Behavior: What Are People Doing on Your Site?

Once users arrive, you need to know what they're up to. Are they finding what they need? Are they getting stuck? Is your content resonating? Behavior reports help you answer these questions.

Report to Use: Engagement > Pages and screens

This report ranks your website pages by popularity, showing you which content is getting the most attention. It’s the direct successor to the "All Pages" report in Universal Analytics.

What it tells you:

It's your go-to report for understanding what content is most engaging for your audience. You can see Views, Users, Average engagement time, and Conversions per page. This helps you identify your top-performing blog posts, most-visited landing pages, and potentially problematic pages that people leave quickly.

Questions you can answer:

• What are our most popular blog posts or landing pages? (Sort by Views)
• Which pages are users spending the most time on? (Sort by Average engagement time)
• Which pages are most effective at driving conversions? (This is huge! It helps you identify content that not only attracts but also converts).
• Are users actually seeing our key services or product pages?
• Where are users entering the site? (Use the search bar to filter for landing pages).

3. Analyzing Conversions: Are People Taking Action?

Traffic and engagement are nice, but conversions are what truly move the needle. This is where you measure whether your website is achieving its business objectives.

Note: Before you can analyze conversions, you must first configure conversion events in GA4. This could be for a "generate_lead" form submission or a "purchase" event.

Report to Use: Engagement > Conversions

This report gives you a high-level summary of all the key actions (events you've marked as conversions) being completed on your site.

What it tells you:

This is your performance scoreboard. It cleanly lists your defined conversion goals and tells you how many times each has been completed. It's a quick way to gauge the overall health of your website's performance.

Connecting Conversions to Acquisition and Behavior:

While this report is a good summary, its true power is realized when you view conversions in other reports. That's how you connect the dots of the ABCs. Go back to the Traffic acquisition report. With the Conversions column visible, you can now see exactly which channels are driving all your key goals, not just your traffic. This immediately tells you where to double down on your marketing budget.

Go Deeper with Comparisons and Segments

Looking at overall numbers is helpful, but the real "aha!" moments come from comparing different segments of your audience. Instead of asking "What is my conversion rate?" ask "Is my conversion rate for mobile users higher or lower than for desktop users?"

GA4 makes this simple with the "Add comparison" feature at the top of nearly every standard report.

How to use comparisons for analysis:

Click "Add comparison" and set up a condition. You can then see your data side-by-side. Here are a few invaluable comparisons to start with:

• Mobile vs. Desktop: Create one condition for Device category = mobile and another for Device category = desktop. Are there huge differences in engagement time or conversion rates? If your mobile metrics are much lower, it might signal a poor mobile user experience.
• New vs. Returning Users: Compare New / established user = new with New / established user = returning. Do returning users convert at a higher rate? If so, your efforts to bring people back (like an email newsletter) are paying off.
• Traffic Source Comparison: Compare Session default channel group = Organic Search vs. Organic Social. Which source brings a more qualified, higher-converting audience?

These comparisons turn your flat data into a story, helping you uncover issues and opportunities you'd otherwise miss.

Putting It All Together: Your Weekly Analysis Workflow

Knowing which reports to check is one thing, building a sustainable routine is another. You don't need to spend hours a day in GA. Consistency is more important. Here’s a simple 20-minute weekly workflow:

1. Define a Goal. Before you even open up GA, ask yourself: "What question am I trying to answer this week?" A specific goal (e.g., "I want to see if last week's blog post brought in leads") is much more effective than aimless clicking.
2. Start Broad & Review KPIs (5 minutes). Check the Reports > Reports snapshot for a high-level overview. Is traffic up or down? How are conversions trending? This gives you context for your deeper analysis.
3. Check Your Acquisition Channels (5 minutes). Go to the Traffic acquisition report. Did any channel over or underperform compared to last week? See which channels drove the most conversions.
4. Check Your Top Content (5 minutes). Navigate to Pages and screens. Did any new content perform well? Check the average engagement time on your key landing pages to spot any potential user experience issues.
5. Formulate One Key Takeaway (5 minutes). At the end, force yourself to write down one observation and one recommended action. For example: "Observation: Our newsletter traffic has the highest conversion rate. Action: We should create a dedicated sign-up landing page and promote it more actively."

This simple process prevents analysis paralysis and ensures you’re always turning your data into tangible actions.

Final Thoughts

Ultimately, analyzing Google Analytics effectively isn't about memorizing every metric. It's about approaching your data with the right questions and a simple framework like Acquisition, Behavior, and Conversion. By regularly checking your core reports and comparing key segments, you can move from just collecting data to making data-informed decisions that truly grow your business. Even a short, focused weekly review can reveal powerful insights.

But even with a solid framework, the process of manually pulling data, jumping between reports, and trying to connect it back to your ads or sales platforms can be a huge time sink. Many teams spend Monday morning downloading CSVs and the rest of the week trying to piece them together. We built Graphed because we believe there's an easier way. By connecting directly to your Google Analytics, ad platforms, and CRM, we let you build real-time dashboards and get answers using simple, natural language. Instead of spending hours hunting through reports, you can just ask, "Show me my top converting landing pages from Facebook Ads Traffic this month," and get a live, interactive chart in seconds.