Ecommerce conversion rate in Google Analytics 4

Updated: December 10th, 2024

In the older version of Google Analytics, there was a metric called Ecommerce conversion rate. Even though no such metric is available in Google Analytics 4, it’s still possible to build a report with it.

In this quick tutorial, I will show you how to find ecommerce conversion rate in GA4 standard reports and explorations.

Here’s what you will learn in this article

• Standard reports
• Explorations
• More resources about key events (previously conversions)

Standard reports

First of all, it’s worth noting the “Conversions” in Google Analytics 4 were renamed to “Key events”. That’s why we will look for a “Key event rate” rather than “Conversion Rate”.

In Google Analytics, go to Reports >Traffic Acquisition report. The left sidebar of GA4 is highly customizable; thus the report might be named something else in your property. Keep looking.

Once you open the report, look for a “Session key event rate” column (if you can’t see it, read this chapter):

If we rephrase it in the context of GA4, ecommerce conversion rate is the Session key event rate that looks only at website purchases. So, we must select the purchase event in the Session key event rate column.

And that’s it. You are now looking at the ecommerce conversion rate within the standard report. But what about explorations? Things get a little trickier, but still possible.

What if I don’t see Key Event rate in my Traffic Acquisition report?

In that case, you’ll have to add it yourself. Open the Traffic Acquisition report and click the Pencil icon at the top-right corner (Customize report).

Then, you will need to add a new metric. Click Metrics.

Click Add metric. 

And keep looking for the Session key event rate. Click it and then hit Apply.

Finally, hit Save > Save changes to the current report > Save. And that’s it! Now, you should have the session key event rate in your traffic acquisition reports.

Explorations

Go to Explore > Blank.

And then add the following:

Dimensions:

• Event name
• Session source / medium

Metrics: Session key event rate. Of course, you can add more metrics if you wish. For example, sessions, total users, ecommerce purchases, ecommerce revenue, etc.

Add Session source/medium to Rows, Session key event rate to values.

But the problem with this report is that it now includes *all* key events in the calculation. You need to narrow down just to purchases. That’s why we will create a filter: Event name matches regex session_start|purchase. Click Apply.

Important: session_start must not be marked as a key event in your property. Otherwise, this method will not work.

It’s important that we also include session_start here. This filter will include all sessions (in the key event rate calculation) but will use only the purchase event as the conversion.

If you also include the Sessions metric in the report, it will look like this:

And there you have it. In the example above, the total session key event rate is 11.2%.

If you are wondering what other metrics to add to the report, here are some ideas:

• Total users
• Purchases
• Session key event rate
• Purchase revenue

Learn more about conversions and conversion rates in GA4

If you want to learn more about key events in GA4, I have two more resources for you (with text and video content):

• How to setup key events in Google Analytics 4
• Key event rate in Google Analytics 4. This blog post explains two types of key event rates (user and session), how they are calculated, and more.

And if you want to learn much more about GA4, then take a look at my Google Analytics 4 course.

Ecommerce conversion rate in GA4: Final Words

And that’s it. You can now see this metric in Google Analytics 4 reports (standard and explorations). The process is much simpler in standard reports: you add the Session key event rate metric and then select the purchase event in that column.

In explorations, on the other hand, you need to add a filter to include only session_start and purchase events. If you filter only to purchase events, you will include only those sessions where the purchase occurred. This means the Session key event rate will be 100% in all rows. And we do not want that.

Have any questions or doubts? Post a comment below!