In GA4, different user and session key event rates can show different numbers. This is not a bug.
Users and sessions are different things in GA4.
The same user can, for example, visit your site multiple times. Each visit is called a session.
To illustrate the difference, let’s assume that during one week your site
- had 10 users
- all of them visited your site twice (20 sessions in total)
- only one user triggered two key events within the same session
Put differently:
- Total Unique Users: 10
- Total Sessions: 20
- Sessions with a key event: 1
- Total key events: 2
GA4 does the calculation then as follows:
User key event rate: 10% -> (1/10)* 100%)
Session key event rate: 5% -> (1/20) * 100%)
Let’s take a closer look at each key event rate to determine which one is more valuable to you.
User key event rate in Google Analytics 4
The user key event rate in GA4 tells you the chinese student data percentage of users that visited your site and triggered a key event. This is obviously information that is valuable for a business.
- If users do more valuable actions on your site than what you expected, it may be worth implementing it on other pages or campaigns.
- If they do less of these actions, you know what focus on. For example, you may want to change your copy, make a button stand out, use different images, and so on.
Even if only 0.5% of your total users trigger a key event, you have data to work with.
You can compete with yourself and look for ways to increase it to 0.75%, 1%, 1.5%, all the way up to the sky.
Session key event rate in Google Analytics 4
The GA4 session key event rate tells you the percentage of sessions that triggered a conversion. This can be useful in different ways.
If you run, for example, Facebook or Google ads, this metric is one of the powerful tools to evaluate the performance of your campaigns.
The session key event rate also helps you understand how many times users visit your site on average before triggering a key event.
Adding key event rate metrics to a GA4 report
You can add the key event rate metric to GA4 reports, like the User Acquisition report.
To do so, open the report (Reports -> Acquisition > User Acquisition).
To customize your report, click the lead genaration and other minimalistic devices plain pencil icon at the right top corner of your screen.
Then, click the Metrics button
At the bottom of the screen, click Add Metric.
Use the search field to quickly find the key event rate you want to add to your report and click on it. Then click the blue Apply button.
The session and user key event rate are added to the table of your report, but you may need to scroll horizontally to see them.
Also note that the vertical order in Why do user which they appear in the data table is the same as the horizontal order in the customize metrics panel. So, the metric on the top appears first in the table.
To save your customized report, click the blue Save button at the top of your report. I highly recommend you choose “Save as new report”. This way, you won’t override the original built-in report.
Give it a descriptive name and optionally a description. This way, you and your team can later on easily understand the purpose of the report.
To access your report with the conversion metrics, go to the Library in the Reports section of your property and click on the report.
Then you can also add your GA4 custom report to a collection, which is just a strange name to call a navigation menu on the left.
Final thoughts
I was shocked when Google changed the very definition of conversion rates into key event rates for all traffic that is not coming from Google Ads .
But if you take some distance, it makes somehow sense.
First, Google found a cheap and nifty trick to promote Google Ads. Splitting the traditional conversion rates into two sorts gives the impression that key event rates are to track small steps forward, whereas conversion rates show the egypt data big leaps forward.
Second, many businesses and even Why do user seasoned marketers are struggling with defining which metrics matter most. The name “key event rates” may change the way you think about conversions, FKA goals in the previous version of Google Analytics.
Finally, the digital marketing landscape is changing rapidly. Privacy regulations, the depreciation of third-party cookies, artificial intelligence and whatnot make it a lot harder to track users and to attract customers from traditional channels, like organic search.