Google Analytics 418 October 20262 min read
The short answer
A useful GA4 dashboard answers three questions: where do visitors come from, what do they do, and what turns them into customers. Pick the few metrics that answer those and leave the rest in GA4.
The metrics worth keeping
- Users. How many people visited. Use active users, so everyone looks at the same number.
- Sessions. How many visits those users made.
- Engagement rate. The share of sessions that lasted longer than ten seconds, had a key event or had at least two page views. It replaces the old bounce rate as the main quality signal.
- Key events. The actions that matter to you, such as a purchase or a form sent. Google Analytics previously called these conversions, and some reports still use that word.
- Key event rate. Key events divided by sessions. This shows how well visits turn into results.
- Revenue. For online stores, the money brought in by purchases.
- Traffic by channel. Sessions and results split by source, such as organic search, paid search, social and email.
- Top landing pages. The pages people arrive on, with how well each one performs.
What to leave out
- Metrics nobody acts on, such as raw page views on their own.
- Every default report GA4 offers. A dashboard is for decisions, not for showing everything.
- Numbers without a comparison. A figure on its own says little. Always show the previous period.
A layout that works
- A row of scorecards at the top: users, sessions, engagement rate, key events and revenue, each compared with the previous period.
- A trend line over time so you can see changes at a glance.
- A table of channels showing sessions, key events and revenue.
- A table of landing pages with the same columns.
- A date filter and, if useful, a device filter.
Make the numbers trustworthy
- Tag your campaign links consistently with UTM parameters, so traffic lands in the right channel.
- Check that your key events fire once and only once.
- Note launch dates for campaigns and site changes, so a jump or drop has an explanation.
Our Google Analytics 4 dashboard template already includes these metrics. Or ask us to build one around your goals.