With Google Analytics 4 (GA4), you have the option to set up custom alerts that trigger an email notification whenever there are changes to the data that is being received into your GA4 property.
For example, should the daily number of total users visiting your site hit below a value of 0, or the weekly revenue total less than £100, you can create a custom alert that will notify you of this change.
These notifications can help identify any issues with data collection or user experience on the website that may be causing these changes. If, like us, you’re producing monthly performance reports based on GA4 data, it’s better to catch these stragglers sooner rather than later.
We’ve detailed a handy, step-by-step guide on how to create custom alerts in GA4 below. Follow the steps below to avoid losing any vital data!
1. Log in to your Google Analytics 4 account and navigate to the ‘Home’ tab of your selected GA4 property. You can find this tab at the top of the column on the left-hand side of the screen.
Scroll down to the bottom of the ‘Home’ tab to reach the ‘Insights & Recommendations’ section. Select ‘View all insights’ in the top right-hand corner of this section.
2. On the Insights tab, select the blue ‘Create’ button in the top right-hand corner of the screen. You’ll be prompted to create suggested custom insights based on Google’s recommendations.
Alternatively, you can create a new insight, defined by your own rules. To do so, select ‘Create new’ under the ‘Start from scratch’ section.
3. In the ‘Set Conditions’ section, select the frequency of evaluation between hourly, daily, weekly or monthly. This is how often the system will check that the conditions of your custom alert are being met. Typically, we’d recommend selecting daily.
4. Next, in the ‘Metric’ field, select a metric from the dropdown list provided. Popular metrics to track include the total number of users, event count and product revenue.
Choose the metric that you’re most interested in receiving a custom alert about. Think, would you want to be notified if there’s a change in the total number of users to your site? Don’t worry, you can create as many custom alerts as you wish – you’ll just have to set them up one by one.
5. In the ‘Condition’ field, select the most appropriate dropdown. In most cases, you should be fine selecting ‘Has anomaly’. This means that if the recorded number of your chosen metric, such as total number of users on your site, is different to what GA4 would have expected (based on previous data), you’ll be notified.
6. The next step is to choose a name for your custom insight. To keep things simple, we recommend naming the insight after the conditions selected. For example, ‘Daily Total Users Has Anomaly’. This is the name that you’ll see in email notifications, so make sure it’s something you’ll understand later.
7. Finally, you’ll need to enter the email address that you wish to send notifications to. You may enter more than one email address – just keep them separated by commas.
8. When you’re happy with the conditions of your new custom alert, select the blue ‘Create’ button in the top right-hand corner of the screen.
If you need to make any changes to your custom alert, or perhaps you’ve changed your mind and you want to delete the alert altogether, select ‘Manage’ in the top right hand corner of the screen in the Insights tab.
Find the custom alert from the list using the name you selected earlier. On the right-hand side, you’ll see three dots. To edit or delete the insight, click on the dots and select the relevant feature from the dropdown.
Voila! You’re done, and your custom insight alert is set up.
Need help setting up your Google Analytics profile? Reach out to the team of experts at Engage Web today.
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