Core Components Overview in Google Analytics 4 ( Data Studio, Ecommerce, Firebase Explained!)
In this blog post, I will cover other remaining core components overview of GA 4 you need to know, including the Google Data Studio, E-commerce Overview, Firebase and Review Measurement Protocol components. So, let’s dive deep into GDS first!
Create Custom Reporting in Data Studio with GA Data
Now that you have started tracking your website or apps in GA 4 and have all of your data ready, it’s time to create custom reports and dashboards in Google Data Studio. But why do you need GDS for reporting where you can see all the data from GA? Personally, I think the most significant use case that commonly applies to most Marketers or Advertisers is that GDS is handy when you need to deliver a high-level report to the board management team to prove the effectiveness of your campaign and website. The visualisation ability has helped you to create custom reporting that explain the data better. To make your report in Data Studio, you would need to go through the following step:
Step 1: Log in to your data studio account, click on “+ Create,” and select “Data Source”. You’ll see a built-in GA Analytics in the first row.
Step 2: Click on it and select your Account> Property for GA 4 and which leads you to the multiple fields where you can adjust the aggregation, parameter types and add fields accordingly. Many of you may have noticed that connecting GA 4 to DS looks a bit different than connecting to UA, where there are no views in GA4 with the built-in GA connectors. You will now see a data schema as GA4 uses an event-based data model distinct from that of UA, in which the available dimensions and metrics are also different.
Step 3: Once you have your data source connected, click on the blank template or the existing template to visualise your data with the desired graphs/components.
Although Google is still constantly working on the roll-out of the new feature, there will be a lot of changes with the DS connector, but this is a great place to create custom reporting.
E-commerce Overview
E-commerce is a huge component for B2C marketers to track online shopping or behaviour. GA 4 has an e-commerce module, but it still feels early from where e-commerce is and where it will be in the future. ( GA 4 is undergoing heavy development.) GA Expert, Charles Farina, foreseen that most e-commerce features will evolve and change over time, but it’s always a good start to review these resources before going any further since this could be an hour or more topic!
To get started with e-commerce, you can always find it under the monetization section.
Note that since this is a quick overview and E-commerce is one of the most challenging components in GA, either UA or GA4 to get right. So this can potentially be a pretty massive undertaking. You can follow the link above to set things up to find the more advanced courses in CXL.
Firebase / Mobile Apps Overview
Now, let’s touch on Firebase. Firebase is known as GA for Firebase or Firebase Analytics or the iOS and Android components that integrate with Google. If you are already using Firebase and have the Analytics account, you can upgrade those to GA 4, bringing all the historical data with it. This is because they share the same event model, and Google basically built GA 4 on top of Firebase. It is, however, does not carry through web data because it is a different data model, moving from the hit-based to event-based data model.
In addition, if you don’t have Firebase yet, but you are interested in getting started, here are a variety of quick start guides effectively for Firebase.
- Walk-Through of UI — Video
- Getting started with Unity (games) — Video
- Getting started with Firebase iOS — Video
- Getting started with Firebase Android — Video
- Get started guide
- Overview of Firebase Products: (A/B Testing | Notifications & Messaging | Hosting, Authentication, Storage | Crashlytics |Much more )
- Firebase Demo Project
One thing to note is that Firebase is a lot more than just analytics. Most companies use Firebase to host their infrastructure on the mobile app side. You can use it for storage and authentication since it contains many features above and beyond just analytics like hosting, real-time databases, crash reporting, in-app messaging, notifications, AB testing, dynamic links, and much more! In short, Firebase is a fully integrated suite for marketers and developers around mobile apps, particularly for both iOS and Android.
Measurement Protocol
Measurement Protocol is an important component for businesses to send data from anywhere directly to GA safely. In UA, anyone could easily guess your GA ID and spam into your Account. However, this is not the case in the GA 4 version because the account IDs are longer sequential, e.g. UA 100110/UA 10120. Instead, it creates random IDs for stream IDs and requires users to set a secret with a key, making it harder for the hacker to guess and send data. If you are interested in knowing more about Measurement Protocol, below are a few libraries for Apple TV, Python, TypeScript and the implementation guide.
- Measurement Protocol for GA4
- Apple tvOS Library (Adswerve)
- Python Library (Adswerve)
- TypeScript/JavaScript library (Adswerve)
- Parameter Definitions (Thanks David Vallejo!)
- Introduction to server-side GTM — video (Thanks Simo!)
In short, to access the measurement protocol, you can find it under your stream settings.
That’s it! I hope you enjoy the article, and if you would like to learn more about the above components, here are some articles to help you fast track the set up:
