How to Use Google Analytics 4 for Ecommerce: 4 Reports and 5 Fixes

Open GA4 and there are so many reports that it’s hard to know where to start. Most guides cover everything from the interface to Explorations, but they rarely say what someone running an online store should actually check each week.

This article narrows it down to four reports for an online store (especially on Shopify), with the order to check them in and how to read each one. It also covers the settings to fix right after setup so the numbers stay accurate. Screens are as of October 2026.

GA4 is split into five sections

GA4’s left navigation has five sections:

Section	What it’s for
Home	Frequently used numbers and recently opened reports
Reports	Predefined summaries. Check your weekly numbers here
Explore	Pick your own dimensions and dig deeper
Advertising	Ad performance and attribution comparisons
Admin	Data collection, retention, permissions and links to other products

Check your weekly numbers in Reports, and when something makes you ask “why?”, dig into it in Explore. For how to use Explorations, see our guide to GA4 Explorations.

The left menu under Reports isn’t the same on every property. If business information (such as your industry) was entered when the property was created, you get the Business objectives collection, with topics such as Generate leads and Drive sales. Otherwise you get the Life cycle collection: Acquisition, Engagement, Monetization and Retention. The Life cycle collection is also the default for properties created before March 27, 2023.

This article uses the Business objectives names. On properties with the Life cycle collection, Traffic acquisition is under Acquisition, Ecommerce purchases under Monetization, and Landing page under Engagement.

The eight metrics to know first

Before reading reports, get clear on what the common metrics mean. For an online store, these eight cover almost everything you check each week.

Metric	What it counts	More detail
Users (Active users)	People who used your site during the period. “Users” in reports means this number	Users vs sessions
New users	People who visited for the first time during the period	Users vs sessions
Sessions	Visits. By default, a new session starts after 30 minutes of inactivity	Users vs sessions
Views	Pages opened. The equivalent of pageviews in Universal Analytics	Users vs sessions
Engagement rate	Share of sessions that lasted longer than 10 seconds (by default), had 2 or more page views, or had a key event
Key events	Count of events you’ve decided to treat as outcomes, such as purchases	Key events
Total revenue	Revenue from purchases and other sources, minus refunds
Transactions	Number of purchases

The difference between users and sessions, and how key events are counted, are common reasons numbers don’t match, so they have their own articles linked above. For the rest of the metrics, see our GA4 metrics list.

The four reports to check first

An online store can narrow its weekly reports down to four. Starting with the change in sales and moving on to sources, products and entry pages takes you from what changed to why. Here’s the order at a glance.

Diagram of the four reports an online store should check first, in order. 1: Drive sales > Overview, to see how sales moved compared with last week or last year. 2: Generate leads > Traffic acquisition, to see which sources drove sales, compared by revenue and key events rather than sessions. 3: Drive sales > Ecommerce purchases, to see which products were viewed, added to cart and bought. 4: Generate leads > Landing page, to see which entry pages lead to purchases. On properties with the Life cycle collection, Traffic acquisition is under Acquisition, Ecommerce purchases under Monetization, and Landing page under Engagement. — The four reports to check first, and the order to check them in (As of October 2026. Created by ULTRO Inc. based on Google Analytics Help and the GA4 interface. Click the image to enlarge.)

In table form:

Order	Report	Where	Question it answers
1	Overview	Drive sales	How did revenue and purchasers move compared with last week?
2	Traffic acquisition	Generate leads	Which sources drove sales?
3	Ecommerce purchases	Drive sales	Which products were viewed, added to cart and bought?
4	Landing page	Generate leads	Which entry pages lead to purchases?

Why only four? Scanning every report rarely leads anywhere. Deciding in advance which reports you check each week, and what question each one answers, gets you to a cause faster.

1. Drive sales Overview: how did sales move?

In the Drive sales Overview, look at how revenue, purchasers and first-time purchasers moved. Change the date range at the top right and compare with last week or the same period last year.

All you’re looking for here is whether something changed. The next three reports tell you why.

2. Traffic acquisition: which sources drove sales?

Traffic acquisition under Generate leads breaks sessions down by where they came from. By default, it uses Session primary channel group, which splits traffic into channels such as Organic Search, Paid Search, Email and Organic Social.

GA4 Traffic acquisition report with Session primary channel group (Default Channel Group) as the dimension. In the left menu, Traffic acquisition sits under Business objectives > Generate leads, and the table has a Key events column with an All events dropdown. Numbers are hidden — ① Generate leads ② Traffic acquisition ③ Key events with its All events dropdown (Screen as of October 2026. Click the image to enlarge.)

Scroll the table to the right for the Key events and Total revenue columns. Look at the sources that bring in the most revenue, not the most sessions. If ads or emails aren’t split out correctly, review how your URLs are tagged; see our UTM parameters guide.

The report people mix this up with is User acquisition, right above it.

	User acquisition	Traffic acquisition
What it counts	Where new users came from on their first visit	Where each session came from, new or returning
Dimension names	“First user …”	“Session …”
When to use it	To see which channels bring in new customers	To track ads and email day to day

The numbers here often don’t match your ad platforms or Shopify. That’s because each counts differently; see our attribution guide for why.

3. Ecommerce purchases: which products sold?

Ecommerce purchases under Drive sales lists, for each product, Items viewed, Items added to cart, Items purchased and Item revenue.

The GA4 Ecommerce purchases report by Item name. In the left menu it sits under Business objectives > Drive sales, and the table has Items viewed, Items added to cart, Items purchased and Item revenue columns. The chart and numbers are hidden — ① Drive sales ② Ecommerce purchases ③ Items viewed, Items added to cart, Items purchased and Item revenue (Screen as of October 2026. Click the image to enlarge.)

Look at the ratios for each product. A product that gets lots of views but few add-to-carts isn’t giving shoppers enough reason to buy on its product page. If a product gets added to cart but rarely bought, check shipping costs, stock and how the price is presented.

For this report to show data, view_item, add_to_cart and purchase events have to be sent along with item information. On Shopify, they are if you’ve connected through the Google & YouTube app, covered below. For GA4’s event types and the parameters ecommerce events need, see our guide to GA4 events.

4. Landing page: which entry pages lead to purchases?

The Landing page report under Generate leads lists sessions, key events and total revenue for each page where a session started.

Check whether the pages people land on from ads and search actually turn into sales. For a landing page with many sessions but little revenue, review the path from that page to product pages and checkout. To see exactly where people drop off, use a funnel exploration in Explore.

When reports can’t tell you why, use Explorations

The four reports are predefined summaries, so they can’t tell you where shoppers stop or who comes back for a second purchase. For that, go to Explore and choose the dimensions yourself. Here’s how what you notice in reports maps to exploration techniques:

What you noticed in reports	Exploration technique	What it tells you
Some sources bring in much more revenue than others	Segment overlap	Which traffic sources produce visitors who go on to buy
A product gets lots of views but few purchases	Funnel exploration	Whether shoppers stop at the product page, cart or checkout
A landing page brings in little revenue	Path exploration	Which pages buyers viewed before purchasing
First-time purchasers are up, but sales aren’t	Cohort exploration	Whether first-time buyers come back for a second purchase

For how to build each one and read it for an online store, see our guide to GA4 Explorations.

Because Explorations let you combine any dimension with any metric, some combinations change what a number means. For example, look at product-level sales with Item revenue, not Purchase revenue. Mixing event-scoped and item-scoped fields is the usual cause; our custom dimensions guide explains scopes.

Settings to fix first

To keep report numbers accurate, take care of these five things right after setting up GA4. Here they are at a glance.

Diagram of the five settings to fix right after setting up GA4, in order. 1: In Shopify's Google & YouTube app, confirm Shopify is connected; if you also added a GA4 tag to your theme, purchases are counted twice. 2: In Admin > Data collection and modification > Data retention, set event data retention to 14 months; at 2 months, explorations can't compare with last year, and expired data doesn't come back. 3: In Data streams > Configure tag settings, exclude internal traffic by defining it and checking the data filter in Testing before making it Active. 4: In Admin > Data display > Events, confirm purchase is a key event; with Google Ads linked and ads personalization on, add_to_cart and others become key events too. 5: In Admin > Product links, link Google Ads and Search Console; Search Console reports appear in the left menu once you publish them in Library. — The five settings to fix right after setting up GA4 (As of October 2026. Created by ULTRO Inc. based on Google Analytics Help, the Shopify Help Center and the GA4 interface. Click the image to enlarge.)

Here’s each one in detail.

1. Confirm Shopify is connected

To connect a Shopify store to GA4, install Shopify’s Google & YouTube app and choose your GA4 property. It then sends events such as page_view, view_item, add_to_cart, begin_checkout, add_payment_info and purchase to GA4 automatically.

Shopify's Google & YouTube app showing Google Analytics connected to a GA4 property — Google Analytics connected in Shopify's Google & YouTube app (Screen as of October 2026. Click the image to enlarge.)

Be careful if you’ve also added a GA4 tag to your theme yourself. Sending from both counts every purchase twice, so use one or the other; see why GA4 records duplicate purchases. Also, GA4 can’t track events while the store is password-protected. For the full setup steps, see how to set up GA4 on Shopify.

Connecting the app doesn’t get every purchase into GA4. Purchases where the buyer paid on an external payment page and never returned to the Thank you page, or where an ad blocker stopped the tag, never reach GA4. To see how many are missing, match Shopify orders against GA4 transaction IDs. Depending on your tag, the transaction ID holds either the order number (such as #1001) or the long numeric order ID, so compare a few first. The steps are in GA4 Not Tracking All Shopify Purchases? We built a Shopify app for this, GapFill. It’s our own product, so read with that in mind. It recovers missing GA4 purchase events server-side, works alongside your existing tags, and the missing purchases report is free.

Our Shopify appGapFill: Recover missing GA4 purchase events server-sideWorks alongside your existing tags. Free missing purchases report.See GapFill →

2. Set event data retention to 14 months

In Admin, under Data collection and modification, open Data retention and change Event data retention from 2 months to 14 months. At 2 months, you can’t compare with last year in Explorations. Changing it doesn’t bring back data that has already expired, so do it first. Standard reports aren’t affected by this setting.

The Data retention screen in GA4 Admin, under Data collection and modification. Event data retention is set to 2 months and User data retention to 14 months — ① Data retention ② Event data retention (2 months by default) (Screen as of October 2026. Click the image to enlarge.)

3. Exclude internal traffic

When your own team browses the store or places test orders, the numbers come out higher than reality. In Admin, open Data streams, select your web stream, click Configure tag settings, then Show more, and under Define internal traffic, register your office IP addresses. Then exclude them with a data filter (Admin > Data collection and modification > Data filters). Leave the filter in Testing first to check how it behaves, then make it Active. Data excluded by an active filter can’t be recovered.

The settings list under Configure tag settings in GA4: Configure your domains, Define internal traffic, List unwanted referrals, Adjust session timeout and Override cookie settings, with Show less below — The Settings list under Configure tag settings. Define internal traffic is the second item (Screen as of October 2026. The boxes mark settings covered in another article. Click the image to enlarge.)

4. Confirm purchase is a key event

Key events are the events that matter to your business, such as purchases or inquiries. They used to be called conversions. In Admin, under Data display, select Events, and click the star next to an event name to mark it as a key event.

GA4 Admin > Data display > Events on the Key events tab. Each event name has a star; purchase's star is pale. Stream names are hidden — ① Events ② The stars next to event names (Screen as of October 2026. Click the image to enlarge.)

For an online store, make sure purchase is marked as a key event. purchase is one of the events GA4 treats as a key event by default.

The catch is that other events can join it. If Google Ads is linked and ads personalization is on, add_to_cart, add_to_wishlist, begin_checkout, session_start, view_item, view_item_list and view_search_results can be marked as key events too. The Key events column in reports then includes more than purchases. When you look at that column in Traffic acquisition or elsewhere, switch the “All events” dropdown above the column to purchase.

For counting methods and why GA4 doesn’t match Google Ads, see our guide to GA4 key events.

5. Link Google Ads and Search Console

In Admin, under Product links, link Google Ads and Search Console.

Linking Google Ads lets you see ad clicks and cost in GA4, and use GA4 key events and audiences in Google Ads
Linking Search Console lets you see search queries and positions in GA4 reports. After linking, publish the Search Console collection in Library so it shows up in the left menu

For how Google Ads conversions relate to GA4, see Google Ads conversion tracking.

Sources

FAQ

Which GA4 reports should an online store check first?

The Drive sales Overview, Traffic acquisition, Ecommerce purchases and Landing page. Look at how sales changed, then which sources drove it, which products sold, and which entry pages led to purchases. That tells you what to fix next.

What's the difference between User acquisition and Traffic acquisition?

User acquisition counts where new users came from on their first visit. Traffic acquisition counts where each session came from, whether the user is new or returning. To track ads and email day to day, use Traffic acquisition.

I can't find Acquisition or Engagement in the left menu of Reports.

The left menu depends on the property. If business information was entered when the property was created, reports are grouped under Business objectives, such as Generate leads and Drive sales. Traffic acquisition is under Generate leads, and Ecommerce purchases is under Drive sales.

How do I connect Shopify to GA4?

Install Shopify's Google & YouTube app and connect it to your GA4 property. It then sends events such as product views, add to cart, begin checkout and purchase automatically. If you've also added a GA4 tag to your theme, purchases are counted twice, so use only one.

What should I set up first after installing GA4?

Set event data retention to 14 months, exclude internal traffic, make sure purchase is a key event, and link Google Ads and Search Console. Change retention first: extending it later doesn't bring back data that has already expired.

What does Users count in GA4 reports?

Active users: people who had an engaged session or visited for the first time during the period. It's a different metric from Total users, which counts everyone who visited.