Web site diagnostics dashboard

We have something new for you, a Dashboard!

When installing the GA4Dataform repository in your GCP project, you have received two ready-to-use reporting tables:

• the demo_daily_sessions_report table
• the demo_diagnostics table

For the Daily Sessions table there is a dashboard already – generously provided by Mehdi Oujida (check out his blog if you’re into Looker Studio, highly recommended).

And now we have a dashboard for the Diagnostics table, too!

Prerequisite: have GA4Dataform installed – obviously

Go to our Get Started with GA4Dataform page to get started.

What is in the dataset and dashboard?

The Diagnostics table contains the past 64 days of your GA4 data, with useful diagnostics of some commonly used dimensions and metrics.

It can be used to quickly spot tracking errors, cardinality of host / page / campaign dimensions, etc. More details below.

How to obtain the dashboard

Here is the link to the dashboard

In the page “Template Instructions” you will find details on attaching your own data to a copy of this dashboard.

Preview it first, using your own data

If you use this preview link of the dashboard, you will see an icon “Use my own data“

Click that link, and select the demo_diagnostics table inside your superform_outputs dataset in your project.

After selecting, click Add and the dashboard will load directly to your dataset. If you like it: follow the instructions on how to create a copy, so you can remove our branding and stick on your own logo.

Detailed overview of the dashboard content

The dashboard consists of 3 pages and an instructions page:

Web site and tracking diagnostics

This page is a general purpose quick tagging and web site health check:

• From how many hostnames do I collect traffic?
  If this is more than expected, you might want to use the configuration file to filter on hostname
• How many unique URLs do I collect daily?
  This basically the page_location cardinality
• How many % of my session_start events are self referrals?
  A self referral is: the hostname in page_referrer is the same hostname as the page. If this is high, it might mean you have a lot of resumed sessions, or a tracking problem
• How many of my events have no cookie?
  Cookieless hits are hits received where Analytics Consent is not granted. Sites with high bounce rate and lots of new visitors will typically show a higher %
• Are my ignored referral domains correctly configured?
  Payment domains, own websites: you can configure this in GA4 under tag settings
• How many measurement protocol hits are coming in

Source and Campaign information

• What is the cardinality for my source/medium/campaign dimensions?
  Normally, medium has less than 20 values, campaign_name more than that (if you are an active campaigner), and source somewhere in between.

This page in the report will quickly show you if you have misconfigured utm parameters (e.g. a sudden spike in unique mediums probably indicates you have some sort of ID in there)

Ecommerce Health

If you have an ecommerce implemention, this page will quickly show you possible ecommerce tracking problems

• Duplicate transaction IDs on a daily, weekly, and % weekly basis
  Duplicates can happen if the transaction ID is incorrect or the tag fires twice (e.g. when the thank you page is reloaded)
• Per ecommerce event, details about:
  • % of events with no item payload (should be a flat zero % line) – except maybe for view_cart
  • number of hits for this event
    So you can quickly spot when a line drops to zero or is flat – meaning you do not track this event (anymore)

That’s it! Enjoy this dashboard, and if you like it: spread the word!