Understanding Google Analytics 4: What Your Business Needs to Track
Understanding Google Analytics 4: What Your Business Needs to Track
By: The One Click Enterprise Team | June 30, 2025
Your website is live. People are visiting. But... who are they? Where are they coming from? And what are they actually doing once they arrive on your site?
Answering these questions is the key to making smart, data-driven decisions that grow your business. The most powerful tool for the job is Google Analytics 4 (GA4).
Logging into GA4 for the first time can feel like stepping into the cockpit of an airplane—dials, charts, and data are everywhere. It can be intimidating. But you don't need to be a data scientist to get incredible value from it.
This guide will cut through the noise and show you the few key questions you should be asking, and which reports in GA4 hold the answers for your South African SME.
Question 1: "How are people finding my website?"
Understanding your traffic sources tells you which of your marketing efforts are actually working.
The Report to Check: Go to Reports > Acquisition > Traffic acquisition.
What It Tells You: This report breaks down your visitors by the channel that brought them to your site. Key channels to watch include:
Organic Search: Visitors who found you through a standard Google search. A high number here means your SEO efforts are paying off.
Paid Search: Visitors who clicked on one of your Google Ads. This helps you measure the immediate impact of your advertising spend.
Direct: Visitors who typed your website address directly into their browser. This is a great indicator of brand recognition and repeat customers.
Referral: Visitors who clicked a link from another website to get to yours.
Organic Social: Visitors who came from your business's social media profiles on platforms like Facebook or Instagram.
Why It Matters: This report shows you where to invest your marketing time and budget. If you see a lot of traffic from Organic Search, you know you should continue investing in SEO.
Question 2: "Who are my website visitors?"
Knowing your audience helps you ensure you're reaching the right people and allows you to tailor your content and offers to them.
The Report to Check: Go to Reports > User > User attributes > Overview.
What It Tells You: This dashboard gives you a snapshot of your audience. You can see a geographic breakdown by country and city, which is crucial for a local business. Are most of your visitors from Gauteng as you expect, or are you surprisingly popular in the Western Cape? You can also see data on age ranges, gender, and interests.
Why It Matters: This helps you verify that you're reaching your target market and can even reveal new potential customer segments you hadn't considered.
Question 3: "What are people doing on my site?"
Are visitors engaging with your most important content, or are they getting lost and leaving?
The Report to Check: Go to Reports > Engagement > Pages and screens.
What It Tells You: This report lists your website's pages from most-viewed to least-viewed. It shows you exactly what content your audience finds most valuable. Is your "Services" page the most popular? Is that new blog post you wrote getting a lot of attention? This report answers those questions. It also shows the "Average engagement time," telling you if people are actually reading the page or just glancing at it.
Why It Matters: By understanding which pages are popular, you know what kind of content to create more of. By seeing which pages have low engagement, you can identify areas of your website that need improvement.
Question 4: "Is my website actually achieving its goals?"
This is the most important question of all. Traffic is nice, but business results are what matter. In GA4, you track these results as "Conversions."
The Report to Check: Go to Reports > Engagement > Conversions.
What It Tells You: A conversion is any key action you want a user to take on your website. Before you can track them, you have to define them. For a typical SME, conversions could be:
A user submitting your contact form.
A user clicking your phone number to call you.
A user downloading your company brochure.
A user making a purchase on your e-commerce store.
Why It Matters: This report moves beyond simply tracking visitors and tells you if your website is actually generating leads and sales—the metrics that truly impact your bottom line. It is the ultimate measure of your website's success.
Don't get lost in the dozens of reports inside GA4. By focusing on these four fundamental questions, you can extract 90% of the value you need to make smarter decisions. Data is powerful, but only when you use it.
Setting up Google Analytics 4 correctly—especially the crucial conversion tracking—is fundamental to measuring your online success. If you're unsure if your setup is providing accurate data, we can help.
At One Click Enterprise, we provide Google Analytics setup and analysis services for South African businesses. Contact us today for a free analytics check-up.