How to Make a Chart in Google Analytics

Trying to make sense of all the data in Google Analytics 4 can feel like drinking from a firehose. Numbers and tables are useful, but charts and graphs are where the real insights pop out. This guide will walk you through exactly how to create and customize charts directly within the GA4 interface, helping you transform raw data into actionable visual reports.

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Your Starting Point: Finding standard reports in Google Analytics

Unlike a spreadsheet tool where you start with a blank canvas, in Google Analytics you typically start with a pre-built report and then customize it. Understanding where to find these is the first step. GA4 organizes its standard reports into a few key areas in the left-hand navigation menu under Reports.

Familiarize yourself with these starting points:

• Acquisition Reports: These reports show you how users are finding your website. The Traffic acquisition report is a perfect place to visualize which channels (like Organic Search, Direct, Paid Social) are bringing you the most visitors.
• Engagement Reports: Curious about what visitors do once they're on your site? Reports like Pages and screens help you see your most popular content, which is great for visualizing with a bar chart.
• Demographics Reports: These reports give you insight into who your users are, including their country, city, age, and gender. The Demographic details report is ideal for creating charts that break down your audience.

Almost any standard report you open will have a chart already at the top. Our goal is to take that default chart and customize it to answer your specific questions.

How to Create a Simple Chart: The Basics

Let's walk through a common scenario: visualizing your daily website users over the past month. A line chart is perfect for this, as it shows trends over time.

Step 1: Choose your report

For this example, we’ll start in a straightforward place. In the left navigation, go to Reports > Acquisition > Traffic acquisition. By default, this report shows a line chart of users over time, broken down by a "Session default channel group" table below it.

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Step 2: Adjust your date range

The first and most common customization you'll make is changing the time frame. In the top-right corner of the report, you'll see a date range (e.g., "Last 28 days"). Click on it.

• A calendar view will appear. You can select from presets like "Last 7 days," "Last 30 days," or "Last 90 days."
• You can also select any custom start and end date you need.
• For our example, let's select "Last 30 days" and click Apply.

The line chart at the top of the report will immediately update to reflect the new date range you selected.

Step 3: Understand dimensions and metrics

Before customizing further, it's essential to understand two terms:

• Dimension: This is the "what" you are measuring. It's a descriptive attribute or characteristic of your data. Examples include Country, Page title, and Traffic source. In charts, this is often your X-axis or how you break down the data.
• Metric: This is the numerical value, the "how much." Metrics are the numbers you count, like Users, Sessions, and Conversions. In charts, this is usually your Y-axis.

In the default Traffic acquisition report, the table's primary dimension is Session default channel group, and the primary metric is Users.

Customizing your GA4 charts

Once you’ve got a basic chart up, you can modify it to answer more specific questions. Here are the most common ways to customize charts in an opened standard report.

Change the chart type

In the top right corner of the chart visualization, you'll see two icons: a line chart icon and a bar chart icon. Just click the one you want to switch to.

• Line Chart: This is the best visual for seeing trends over a continuous period, like daily traffic over a month.
• Scatter Chart: This chart type can show relationships or concentrations of data but is less practical in most use cases.
• Bar Chart: This type of chart is ideal for comparing values across different categories, like showing the number of users from your top five traffic channels.

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Add a secondary dimension with chart breakdowns

This is where your analysis gets interesting. What if you want to see not just total users, but users broken down by the type of device they're using?

1. Below the chart, find the table of data. The first column is your primary dimension (e.g., Session default channel group).
2. Click the small "+" sign next to the primary dimension’s header.
3. A dropdown list will appear. Search for and select Device category.

The table will now show a second column, breaking down each channel by device (Desktop, Mobile, Tablet). More importantly for our tutorial, the line chart above will now update, showing separate colored lines for each device category. You can hover your mouse over the chart to see the exact numbers for any given day, for any given device type.

Use comparisons to segment your data

Comparisons allow you to layer different audience segments onto a single chart. For example, maybe you want to compare traffic from the United States to traffic from Canada.

1. At the very top of the report, a little below the report’s title, click the “Add comparison” button.
2. The builder on the right opens. Choose a dimension to build your segment. For our example, select Country.
3. For Match Type, keep “exactly matches” and for Value, select or type United States of America. Click Apply.
4. Click "Add new comparison" and repeat the process for Canada: Country > exactly matches > Canada. Click apply.

The entire report, including the chart at the top, will now display two sets of data side-by-side: all users in one color and Canada users in another color. You can see both as two colored series on the same chart.

Creating advanced custom charts in ‘Explore’

Standard reporting allows some flexibility. The Explore sections (found at the top left navigation menu) is where you get full control to create unique data visualizations just for your company's needs. This is essentially GA’s version of a data visualization studio.

Let’s build a pie chart which shows which pages drive the most traffic. This is a great way to get introduced to Explore Reports.

Starting a New Exploration

Click on Explore on the left, and select Blank. This opens a blank canvas.

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Understanding the Interface

Get used to the following terminology:

• Variables: This is where you import the dimensions and metrics you're going to use in your chart. They’re like ingredients in a recipe.
• Tab Settings: This is where you actually build the chart. Here’s where you drop pieces from the Variable column.

Building the Pie Chart

First, let’s import the “ingredients” we need. In the Variables panel:

1. Click the "+" sign next to Dimensions. Search for and select Page title and screen class, then click Import.
2. Click the "+" sign next to Metrics, search for and select Users and Event count, then click Import.

Now that we have your “ingredients,” let’s use them in your chart. In the Tab Settings panel:

1. Under Visualization, click the dropdown (that says Table by default) and select Pie chart.
2. In the Slices section, drag and drop Page title and screen class from the Variables column into the dimensions box.
3. In the Values section, drag and drop Users and Event count from the Variables panel into the metrics box.

Instantly, on the right, you will see a full colored pie chart showing the breakdown of users and event count by each specific page on your website. You can customize this further by changing the data range or adding filters right within the Explore interface.

Final Thoughts

Visualizing your data in Google Analytics is about mastering standard reports to answer questions and going into the Explore section for unique, customized insights. These tools help you identify trends, compare segments, and uncover valuable insights that are hidden in plain data.

We know that even the Google Analytics tool can feel overwhelming at times, especially when you're just starting out. That's why we've designed Graphed to take all the effort out of data visualization, letting you ask questions in plain English, like “Where is website traffic coming from?” and instantly get visual reports. Connect directly all your key marketing data sets to Google Analytics complete with way more powerful tools.