I spoke in my previous post on GA4 (GA4, 4 Things I Hate and 3 Things I Love) about how GA4 reports do not include a way to calculate a metric on the fly. this was a strange omission as Adobe Analytics has had this capability in their Analysis Workspace reports for quite some time. Google seems to have listened to this issue as they have now unveiled “Calculated Metrics”. These are available in both the Explore and most of their canned reports (I was not able to check every report, but I was able to confirm this in the Traffic Acquisition reports). Metrics like product views to cart conversion can now be added directly to eCommerce reports. Also, as far as I know, they can be created on the fly and data will be back processed.
Steps:
- Click on the Admin icon at the bottom left corner of the interface.
- Click on “Custom Dimensions” under your property.
3. Click on “Calculated Metrics” and then “Create Calculated Metric”.
4. Give the metric a name. You should then be able to type in the “Formula” box. Metrics will pre-populate in the box. You can also add operators (+, -, *, /,()) to do calculations. Here I am creating a calculation with “Items Viewed” as part.
5. You can also select different units of measurement.
6. Click save and then you can select your metric in Explore or other canned reports.
While this is a much needed addition, I didn’t find it to be without faults.
- The metric list is very limited. Only canned user, session, event and eCommerce metrics are included. There is no concept of dimensionality. For instance, if I wanted to create a metric for number of logins, which would be calculated by taking the number of events where the event name is “login”, I would need to filter by event name is “login”. It doesn’t look like this is possible.
- While there are units of measurement, there were no formatting options. I created a ratio which I should be able to format as a percentage. My report just showed 1’s when there should have been percentages.
- You can’t use a calculated metric in the formula for another calculated metric.
Check it out – https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/14166471?sjid=4876129201685386774-NA