Decoding GA4: Part III

If you’ve ever opened GA4 and felt a little lost, you’re not alone. For many arts and cultural marketers, making sense of the platform can be tricky—and when key terms are misunderstood, it can lead to frustrating missteps.

Several dimensions in GA4 capture allow you to understand how content or URLs on your site are performing. For more commonly misunderstood terms in GA4, explore Part I and Part II.

Landing Page 

The Landing Page dimension reflects the first page viewed in someone’s visit and is the primary dimension in the Landing Page report. 

Note: It’s normal to see “(not set)” among your top 10 landing pages. This happens when users land on the site and then leave the tab open in their browser. If they return to that tab more than 30 minutes later, they’ll have another session, but the landing page won’t be set again. 

Landing page can be helpful to understand which pages are the most common entry points (spoiler alert: for the majority of traffic, it’s probably NOT the homepage!). It can also help you understand which pages give a better first impression. 

How do I use this dimension?

• Landing Page + sessions: how many visits originated on that page
• Landing Page + views: for visits that started on this page, how many total pages were viewed across the site, including other pages
• Landing Page + engagement rate: what share of visits that started on this page lasted longer than 10 seconds or went on to view another page
• Landing Page + session key event rate: for visits beginning on this page, what share ended in a key event (conversion)

Page Path and screen class

While landing page is the first page of a visit, several dimensions support analysis of all content viewed across the site, whether it’s the first or the fifth page viewed. Most of these dimensions can be found in the Pages and screens report.

• Note: you’ll see “Pages and Screens” since GA4 is built for apps and websites: apps have “screens” and websites have “pages.” 

Take this URL: https://capacityinteractive.com/blog/decoding-ga4/?fbclid=1231231231231123

Page path + screen class: Excludes the domain and query string. 

• https://capacityinteractive.com/blog/decoding-ga4/?fbclid=1231231231231123

Query parameters like the Facebook click id (fbclid) in our example can make it challenging to understand total visits to a page. This dimension allows you to consolidate total traffic to a page.

• Note: Why “screen class”? GA4 is built to measure both apps and websites. While websites have “pages,” apps have “screens.”

How do I use this dimension?

• Page Path + sessions: how many visits included this page.
• Page Path + views: how many times was this page viewed in total—it could be the first page or the fifth
• Page Path + engagement rate: how many visits that included this page lasted longer than 10 seconds or included another page.
• Page Path + purchase:  how many purchases happened on this page—you should only see purchases and revenue associated with order confirmation pages

Several additional dimensions available in GA4 reflect different aspects of the URL and allow you to do more aggregate or more granular analysis. These can be added to your “Pages and screens” report using the “Customize detail report” instructions and can also be accessed in Explorations and Looker Studio.

Hostname: Domain

• https://capacityinteractive.com/blog/decoding-ga4/?fbclid=1231231231231123

Page Path + Query: Displays the URL path plus query parameters.

• https://capacityinteractive.com/blog/decoding-ga4/?fbclid=1231231231231123

Page Location: the full URL 

• https://capacityinteractive.com/blog/decoding-ga4/?fbclid=1231231231231123

Gain Clarity with a Website Analytics Partnership

GA4 can feel overwhelming, but it doesn’t have to be. Capacity Interactive specializes in helping arts and cultural organizations demystify their website data, ensuring your analytics align with your marketing goals. Ready to make smarter, data-driven decisions? Let’s work together to optimize your tracking and insights—we can’t wait to connect with you!