What are channel reports in website analytics, and why are they important?
Channels are pre-segmented and group traffic sources from websites
Summary
Channels are pre-segmented and group traffic sources that better help us see our traffic and marketing efforts are working at a high level.
Channel and channel conversion reports are great for your marketing agency clients or your own organization.
These reports act as a guide to identifying strengths and weaknesses in a marketing strategy. Detailed data about channel performance helps businesses pivot or double down on methods based on real-world performance, making channel reports an indispensable asset for any data-driven marketing approach.
What Are Channels?
Channels are logically grouped website traffic sources. This table shows the default for SaturnOne and Google Analytics 4 (GA4).
You can see we both have the same. With both tools, we can create custom channels.
And yes, SaturnOne tends to be a lot easier. Moreover, we unusually to it for customers. This makes it super easy to set up channels that could be “Influencer” or “Newsletter Sponsoring.”
SaturnOne vs. GA4 and Looker Studio
SaturnOne has a built-in channel trend report. With GA4, you need Looker Studio or another 3rd-part tool. It literally takes seconds with SaturnOne and hours to generate these reports with Google tools. This make using SaturnOne idea for analysis in real-time, and impractical with Google tools.
SaturnOne
SaturnOne has two built-in tools for analysis and reporting.
- An overview analytics report with session, engagement, and conversion metrics
- A channel trends report where you see traffic and sessions over time by channel
Both reports default to a white label for marketing agencies with the agency and client logos.
You can even deliver this report in a client dashboard or with pretty PDFs in seconds… yes, seconds!
See the video below and the images.
Both reports print nicely or into PDF with your logos already on them. Exporting the data is just one click away also.
We can segment with simple dropdown selectors by:
- Campaigns
- Content Groups
- Countries & Regions
- Weekly or Monthly
GA4 and Looker Studio
The article by Kelly Alica Liman, ”How to Create a Google Analytics 4 (GA4) Channel Report in Looker Studio” gives a detailed how-to.
There are about 19 steps for a basic report, another 11 steps to add trending, and some excellent charts. These 30 steps will take you several hours to complete. This is for just one client if you are a marketing agency – our audience is largely.
In summary, the process involves starting with a blank report in Looker Studio, where you connect data sources and customize elements for your report. It then guides through creating a Channel Performance Overview Report, incorporating scorecards for customer journey metrics, a table for channel performance, and pie charts for acquisition overview. Lastly, it covers creating a Deep Dive Report by customizing elements for detailed analysis, including a column chart for trend lines and using a drop-down list to drill down on specific channels. This structured approach helps in analyzing channel performance comprehensively. For the detailed guide, refer to the original tutorial on XYZ Lab's website using the above link.
