Conversion Rate in GA4

My favourite metric in GA4 is conversion rate (we all have a favourite analytics metric, right?).

However, Google doesn’t make it easy to find in the latest version of Analytics.

If you are sick of manually dividing your number of conversions by the number of sessions seen, or worse, you aren’t reviewing conversion rate as a performance metric anymore, then this is the blog you need.

As it happens, conversion rate is still absolutely a part of GA4, and with a few simple steps you can include it in your standard reports – no spreadsheets or custom reports needed.

How Do I Work This Magic?

By default, GA4 shows the total number of conversions in reports, but not the conversion rate. 

However, you can add it back in by clicking the pencil in the top right corner of the “Traffic/User Acquisition” report (or any report really, but it probably makes the most sense here!).

From here, you can edit the report to include additional metrics – simply click “metrics” under the “report data” heading, and then add a new metric.

But there are two conversion rate metrics shown – what are they and how are they different?

User vs Session Conversion Rate.

It’s pretty simple really – if you want to know what proportion of all people who visit the site go on to convert, choose “user conversion rate”. This will account for users who convert, whether it’s their first, second or 10th time visiting the site (cookie deletion notwithstanding). This is great for monitoring the overall performance of the site, especially if you are likely to have a longer lead time to conversion.

However, if you want to understand what proportion of site visits end in a conversion – if you are an e-commerce site for instance – the “session conversion rate” is the one for you. This will track the conversion rate of every session, so if someone buys a product one day, then again the next week, they’ll count twice – this wouldn’t be the case with “user conversion rate”.

Just remember to use the dropdown under “conversions” and “conversion rate” to filter by the specific events you are interested in – because by default it looks at all conversion events combined. 

Is There More GA4 Wizardry I’m Not Aware Of?

Yep – GA4 might have been around for over a year now, but there are still a lot of intricacies compared to Universal Analytics that mean you’re likely missing out on some key insights.

If you want to learn more about how you can use GA4 to report better, learn more about your users, and optimise your website – speak to Uplift, or read more here.