Creating alerts in your Google Analytics account is a great idea as you can get an email whenever something unexpected happens with your web or app traffic. This has been one of my favorite pro-tips when giving a Google Analytics training. While GA4 no longer has custom alerts, it does offer a new and improved version called Custom Insights. Here, we walk you through this feature from what it is to how to set it up.
Table Of Contents
- What Is a Custom Alert?
- Are Alerts Different in GA4 Than Universal Analytics?
- How Do I Create A Custom Alert in GA4?
- Can someone help me create alerts in GA4 and UA?
What Is A Custom Alert?
A custom alert is a notification you create to be notified whenever there’s a change that occurs in your web or app traffic. You set the parameters and Google Analytics will then email you whenever that alert is triggered. Some examples of custom alerts include a drop in traffic, an increase in transactions, a change in organic traffic, etc.
Are Alerts Different In GA4 Than Universal Analytics?
Yes, in Universal Analytics properties these notifications are called custom alerts. In GA4 properties these notifications are called insights. GA4 has some pre-built insights and you can create your own to function in a similar manner to custom alerts.
GA4 has some new additions that are not available in Universal Analytics. For instance, with Universal Analytics (UA) the soonest you were able to be notified was the next day. With GA4 you have the option of being notified as soon as an hour later. Another addition is with GA4 you can be alerted whenever there’s an anomaly in your data.
There are some features in UA, however, that are not available in GA4. With UA you can be notified via text or email. GA4 only gives the email option. Another feature is that you’re limited with your segments. In UA you could set an alert for your homepage organic traffic but with GA4 you’re limited to organic users visiting any page on your site. This could change in the future as GA4 is constantly evolving.
How Do I Create A Custom Alert In GA4?
On the reports snapshot (default homepage of GA4 properties) you’ll find several tiles covering performance. Look for the Insights tile and click on “View all insights” at the bottom of this tile.
Now you’ll see all of the default insights GA4 has created. Look for the blue Create button on the upper right-hand corner to create your own alert.
It’s a good idea to first ask yourself what you would like to be notified on exactly. How about a drop in traffic, a drop in sales, or a sudden lift in conversions? Write them all out. Once you’ve decided what exactly you’d like to be alerted on then you can see if any of those are covered in the Suggested Custom Insights section. To use one of the suggested insights, select “review and create” or “create selected” to select them all. If you wish to create your own then scroll down to the bottom of the page and look for the “Start from scratch” section and click on the “Create new” button.
Creating A New Alert
First, you’ll need to set up the conditions or parameters of the alert. The first section is the evaluation frequency which indicates how often GA4 should check for this insight. You can do hourly, daily, weekly, or monthly.
Second, you’ll want to define the segment of users for the alert. If you want to create an alert for all your users then you can skip to the next paragraph. If you want to be notified for only a certain set of users then hit the Change button which will then open a slide-out Select Segment page where you can define the user group.
On the Select Segment page, you can click on the Dimension drop-down to narrow your audience pool. For instance, if I wanted to create an alert on my Android app users I would go to the Dimension drop-down and select Platform. Next, the Dimension values box will appear and here I would select Android.
You have the option of further narrow your audience pool for the alert by adding more dimensions. If I wanted to narrow my Android app user pool to ONLY people in the United States then I could add the dimension Country with dimension value set to United States. Now, GA4 will look only at my Android users within the United States for this alert.
Click the Apply button once you’ve defined your audience segment for this alert.
Next, you’ll set the metrics for the alert. Let’s say I want to set an alert for when there’s a drop in traffic so I’ll select Sessions as my metric. Then we need to set the condition. You can set the condition to look for an anomaly or you can set the metrics yourself.
For example, if you wanted to be alerted when your site or app crashed then you can choose Sessions as your metric with “is less than or equal to” with a value of 0. This would tell GA4 to alert you when there have been 0 recorded sessions.
You can also select a % change to notify you if a metric has change by a certain threshold. For instance, if I wanted to know if there was a lift in transactions I could set my Metric to transactions with % decreases by more than 40% compared to the same day in the previous week. This would notify me whenever transactions dropped by 40%. It’s important to select the same day in the previous week for % changes just because your users may behave differently on the weekends versus weekdays.
The next step is to name your insight. Make sure this is descriptive enough so that when you receive the email alert you know exactly what was detected. If I created an alert to look at when my web segment of users had sessions drop by 50% compared to the same day the previous week then my insight name could be “Web sessions -50% yesterday”. Naming it something generic like “alert 1” wouldn’t tell you anything and you’d have to open Google Analytics to see what exactly the alert was and why it went off.
Finally, you’ll enter the email address(es) that should be notified whenever this action occurs. If you skip this step then you will not be emailed. Once completed, hit the “create” button in the upper right-hand corner. Now, you’re all set! Yay!
Using A Suggested Custom Insight
If you chose to use one of the suggested custom insights for your alerts then the process will be the same as above except that everything will be pre-filled out. You can update any portion following the instructions for creating a new alert in the previous section.
Can I Edit Or Delete A Custom Alert?
Yes, you can edit an alert by clicking on the “Manage” button in the upper right-hand corner of the Insights page. Hover over the alert you’d like to edit or delete and select the 3 little dots that appear. From there you can either edit or delete the alert entirely.
Can someone help me create alerts in GA4 and UA?
Yes, the Data Lumination team is available for custom alerts consulting. We can identify and develop alerts for all your business needs or audit your current alerts.
What do you think of Custom Insights? Tell us about it in the comments.
Written by Mikhail Cherniss
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