Introduction:

Are you looking for a blog to decode or understand ‘Google Analytics Dashboard’? Here you can learn.

Google Analytics 4 (GA4) may seem daunting to beginners, but once you understand it, it becomes more effective. And it’s a powerful tool to track visitors’ insights. It provides you with a lot of information about users' activity on your website or app, as well as overall performance information.

In this post, we’ll decode the Google Analytics dashboard step-by-step. It explains what the GA4 dashboard is, how it looks after creating a property, the top 5 dashboards beginners can also understand, and what the common metrics are displayed in the dashboard. You’ll learn how to visualize data in the dashboard UI..

Google Analytics Dashboard:

The Google Analytics dashboard doesn’t track data from your website. Instead, its customizable digital interface allows you to choose widgets (up to 12 widgets per dashboard) to track metrics. By using the Google Analytics dashboard, you can quickly gauge your website’s performance, compare reports, and monitor your business from a single location.

Uses of the GA4 dashboard:

Customization:

You can create and customize dashboards with various widgets to track the specific data and metrics that are most important to your business goals.

Data Visualization:

Dashboards present data in an easy-to-understand format using visual elements like,

Graphs

Charts

tables

And more

This helps in quickly gauging website performance.

Centralized Monitoring:

It acts as a single location to monitor multiple metrics and dimensions from different reports, providing a holistic view of your website’s health.

Metric Tracking:

Dashboards can track a wide array of data, including.

Traffic Source: It gives details about where your website visitors came from (e.g., search engines, paid ads, social media).

User Behavior: It gives users’ spending time on your site, engagement by device (desktop, mobile, or tablet), and conversion rates.

Geographic Data: It gives the location of your website visitors (e.g., from which city, country, or region).

Conversions: This metric indicates the rate at which users complete desired actions on your site.

Metrics in the dashboard at the beginning:

When you create your property ID in GA4, it takes 24-48 hours to load your data in the GA4 UI.

Initially, the dashboard looks empty with some basic metrics.

And it shows “No data received from your website yet.”

After 24 to 48 hours:

After 24 to 48 hours, your UI will display data.

How to create a Google Analytics dashboard:

Step 1:

First, you need to satisfy the prerequisites mentioned above.

Step 2:

Make sure you add “tag instruction” in your website source code (on all pages).

You can find tag instructions in Admin→Data Collection and Modification→Data streams.

Click “Admin.”

You can see data streams you’ve created before (during account creation) and click.

Click the View tag instructions button.

Add this tag in your website’s source code “manually,” or you can install it with a website builder or CMS.

Step 3:

After 24 to 48 hours, the data will be displayed on the Google Analytics default dashboard template on the Home page.

Top 5 dashboards in GA4:

Home & Realtime (quick snapshots)

Lifecycle (Acquisition, Engagement, Monetization, Retention)

User (Demographics, Tech)

Advertising (if linked to ad accounts)

In this lifecycle (reports section), the dashboard may vary depending on your needs. You can add dashboards for your business objectives.

Home Dashboard

After activating Gtag, your data loads on your home page. Shows real-time snapshots of users, top pages, traffic channels, and conversions.

Real-time Dashboards

In the real-time dashboard, you can view the data of current users on your site/app, including their location, traffic source, live events, and live page path.

Lifecycle Dashboards

Acquisition reports

It shows the data of where your visitors come from (organic search, social, referral, paid ads, and direct traffic).

Report contents consist of,

User Acquisitions

Traffic Acquisitions.

Lead Acquisitions

User Acquisition Cohorts

User Acquisition Reports:

It shows how you got the users (by source, medium, or campaign).

Traffic Acquisition Reports:

It shows all session data (returning + new), broken down by source/medium, channel, or campaign.

3. Lead Acquisition Reports:

It shows leads data (new leads, qualified leads, converted leads) for your website. Measures traffic sources, campaigns, and channels specifically tied to lead events (like submissions, sign-ups, and demo requests).

4. User Acquisition Cohorts Reports:

User Acquisition Cohorts reports let you track groups of users over time, analyze their retention and behavior, and compare with acquisition sources that bring the most loyal and valuable users.

Engagement reports

It shows the data of how users interact with your site/app—like page views, average engagement time, top pages, and events.

Reports consist of,

Events

Pages and Screens

Landing page

Event Reports:

This report displays all user interactions (events) tracked on your website or app.

In GA4, everything is event-based (page views, clicks, purchases, downloads, etc.).

Pages and Screens Reports:

This report shows you which web pages (for websites) or screens (for mobile apps) users visit most often and how they interact with them. It’s basically the content performance report.

Landing Page Reports:

This is the first page a user sees when they arrive at your website or app. Basically, it tells you where users enter your site and whether those pages are performing well.

Monetization reports

It shows revenue, transactions, purchases, top products, and checkout behavior of your site/app. It is important for e-commerce and SaaS businesses, and it shows what’s making money and where sales leak.

The report consists of,

E-commerce Purchase

Purchase journey

Checkout journey

promotions

Transactions

E-commerce Purchase Reports:

It shows data specific to item views. Implementing certain events will let you see the most popular products on your site and check out the performance of your promotions.

Purchase Journey Reports:

It helps you to understand how users move through the buying funnel on your site/app. It typically shows step-by-step progress (view product, add to cart, begin checkout, add payment info, purchase).

Checkout Journey Reports:

It helps you analyze the customer’s checkout funnel step-by-step from when they start checkout to when they complete a purchase.

Transaction Reports:

This report helps you understand how users purchase, how much revenue is generated, and which products are performing well. The typical metrics include transactions, e-commerce purchases, revenue, items purchased, average purchase revenue, and purchase-to-view rate.

Promotions Reports:

This report shows how internal promotions (banners, pop-ups, in-app promotions, and featured sections) drive engagement and conversions.

User Dashboards

This report focused on your user attribute and technology. It gives you insights into who your users are.

User Attributes Reports

This report shows who your users are, focusing on demographics and audience definitions.

The report consists of,

Demographics

Audiences

Demographics Reports:

This report gives you insights into who is behind your traffic.

Audience Reports:

Audiences are groups of users who share common characteristics or behaviors (e.g., “users from India,” “returning users”).

Tech Reports

This report shows the devices, browsers, operating systems, and app versions your users are using. These reports help you optimize performance, design, and user experience for the technology your device prefers.

Decode Google Analytics Dashboard