Understanding User Acquisition by Manual Source Platform in Google Analytics 4
Tracking how users arrive at your website through different manual source platforms is crucial for evaluating your marketing efforts and understanding your audience's journey. This analysis helps identify which traffic sources are most effective in driving user engagement and helps optimize your marketing budget allocation. We'll show you how to create this insightful report in Google Analytics 4.Basic Report Structure
- Primary dimension: Session Source/Medium
- Secondary dimension: Platform
- Key metrics: Users, Sessions, Engagement Rate
- Visualization: Table format with user metrics
- Time comparison: Enable period-over-period comparison
Steps to Create the Report
- Open GA4 and navigate to Explore section
- Click the Blank template to start a new exploration
- Under the Dimensions click the + button and search for Session source/medium and Platform, check the checkbox beside them and click Confirm
- Under the Metrics click the + button and search for Total users, Sessions, Engagement rate, and Average engagement time, check the checkboxes and click Confirm
- Drag Session source/medium to the Rows section
- Drag Platform as a secondary dimension to the Rows section
- Drag all metrics to the Values section
- In the Filters section, add a filter to exclude "(not set)" values
- Set your desired date range in the report settings
- Optional: Add a comparison date range to track changes over time
Important Dimensions and Metrics
- Session source/medium: Shows the origin of your traffic (e.g., google/organic, facebook/cpc)
- Platform: Indicates the device platform users are accessing from
- Total users: Count of unique users from each source
- Sessions: Number of sessions initiated by these users
- Engagement rate: Percentage of engaged sessions
- Average engagement time: Time users spend actively engaging with your site
Actionable Insights
- Identify which source/platform combinations drive the most engaged users and allocate marketing budget accordingly
- Compare engagement rates across platforms to optimize content for specific devices
- Use the data to create targeted campaigns for underperforming platform/source combinations
- Analyze time trends to understand seasonal patterns in user behavior across different platforms
- Optimize landing pages based on the most common source/platform combinations
Answers Similar Questions
- How to see traffic sources by device in GA4
- Track user acquisition by platform GA4
- GA4 source/medium platform report setup
- Google Analytics 4 traffic source by device type
- How to analyze traffic sources across different platforms GA4
