GA4 Custom Report Case Study for E-commerce Business5 Report Sections Built Around the Business

GA4 ships with general reports that try to suit every type of website. For an e-commerce owner that means answers are scattered: audience data in one place, traffic sources in another, product performance somewhere else, and Google Ads results hidden behind extra clicks.

Custom reports fix that by putting the exact dimensions and metrics the business needs into one organised section of GA4, so the important questions can be answered in seconds instead of being skipped altogether.

• User Report: who the customers are, new versus returning users, devices, countries and cities, all measured against purchases and revenue
• Ecommerce Reporting: purchases, revenue, average order value, best-selling items and a Purchase Conversion Report by transaction ID
• Engagements Reports: landing pages, page views, events and engagement time, showing which content leads visitors toward buying
• Google Ads Report: campaigns, ad groups and keywords compared on users, purchases, revenue and return, inside GA4
• Acquisition Report: every traffic source, from organic search and paid ads to email and social, compared on the same purchase and revenue metrics

• Which countries, cities and devices produce the most revenue, not just the most visitors
• Whether returning customers spend more than new ones, and how many come back
• Which landing pages and product pages are most often viewed before a purchase
• Which Google Ads campaigns and keywords bring in sales, alongside every other channel
• Whether every order is tracked once, with the right value, so the revenue figure can be trusted

One report inside the Ecommerce collection shows every purchase broken down by transaction ID. Over the last 28 days, from September 23 to October 20, 2026, it recorded 138 purchases and £11,261.97 in revenue, and it immediately showed where the purchase tracking needed attention.

• 28 purchases, 20.29% of the total and £1,618.22 in revenue, had no transaction ID and appeared as (not set)
• Several transaction IDs showed 2 purchases each, a sign the purchase event could fire twice for the same order
• One order was recorded with £0.00 revenue
• Those findings became a clear fix list: one purchase event per order, a transaction ID on every purchase, and the real value and GBP currency sent every time

• Custom detail reports created in the GA4 Reports library, then grouped into five named collections in the left-hand menu
• Each report given only the dimensions and metrics it needs, with filters such as event name contains purchase where relevant
• Purchases and total revenue used as the shared metrics across every report, so numbers can be compared from section to section
• Google Ads linked to GA4 so campaign and keyword data appears in the Google Ads Report
• Report names written in plain English so anyone in the business can find the right one

In GA4, open Reports, then Library at the bottom of the menu. Create a new detail report from a blank template or an existing one, choose the dimensions and metrics you need, add filters, and save it. Then create a new collection, give it a clear name, and drag your saved reports into topics such as Users, Ecommerce or Acquisition.

Publish the collection and it appears in the left-hand Reports menu for everyone with access to the property, exactly like the custom report section shown in the screenshot above.

The owner now has one place in GA4 that answers the questions that matter: who buys, where they come from, what they look at and whether the sales numbers are accurate. Decisions about budget, products and marketing channels are based on clear reports instead of guesswork.