Details Released on GA4 Tools for Auto Dealers

As promised, I'm writing to detail the amazing reporting templates which will available to attendees of the Modern Retailing Conference (MRC) in Palm Beach Florida. The conference will be covering many of the most important subjects regarding the future of automotive retailing and online measurement is one of those topics.

Exclusive Resources for MRC Attendees:

• Looker Studio Report Template: Receive exclusive templates and sample reports which dive deep into homepage and SRP page metrics using the ASC events. Identify which call-to-actions are generating engagement, discover which filters drive searches, and uncover much more. Use these free templates to create your own customized Looker Studio reports or use them as is, for an out of the box report on any property receiving ASC events.
• ASC Event and Parameter Checker Report: Get a comprehensive report to quickly identify which ASC events are visible and which parameter values are at your fingertips.

GA4 Reporting: Sneak Peak

The reporting dashboards can be quickly applied to any GA4 account which you have access to view. Marketing managers and agencies who have multiple stores to manage can quickly jump from store to store and compare performance. Best of all, these templates can be extended to add additional KPIs which are important for your dealership.

In figure 1.1 above, here are some of the highlights:

• Call to action element text counts, with drill down to see if the text was on a link, button , image etc
• Call to action breakdown per element type, showing the general areas getting the most engagement on the home page.?
• Chart showing what creatives drove engagement on the home page
• Table showing where the creatives directed customers next. AKA are you sending people to the right places??
• Pie chart breaking down what models’ customers interact with id they have media images/galleries on the home page
• Timeline of the top 3 models to identify outliers or trends per day.?
• Search widget Call to action breakdowns, to identify what gets the most engagement on search tools.
• Tree map showing all the models customers search to get a clear idea of popularity at a glance.

In figure 1.2 above, here are some of the highlights:

• SRP call to actions per text whole page bar cart
• Specifically vehicle details card/section top call to actions
• Call to action type breakdown
• All events for New Vs used V mixed condition over time to see if tends can be spotted?
• Page view counts per condition?
• Filters being applies at the SRP level, what are people configuring
• If multiple option are present, do there orders effect how they are engaged with? Drill down to see WHAT was in that order
• Whole page configurations from list to grid? What do customers prefer?
• what sorting options do customers use? Do we see something other then low to high??
• Do customers use pagination? Or is it like google and if it is not on page 1 they don’t see it?

Now let's move on to the free ASC Event Checker tool!

ASC Event Checker Tool: Sneak Peak

The ASC Event Checker, Figure 1.3 above, shows all ASC events per event owner, and then next to that sorts by any events with 0 counts, to highlight missing events. Under that , the tool shows the number of non-ASC events to ASC events, and allows you to expand the table to see exactly what non-ASC events you are seeing.

Do you see hundreds of events labeled 1,2,3,4,5,6? That’s the old UA events! Time to lean them up.

Select a parameter to see what ASC event is sending it and identify what values you have to work with (see Figure 1.4 above)

Example element_type:

This lets me see the high level elements of my pages, I can now use these values to make a report on say element_type ?= “popup” to look at all popups on my whole site and see how they preform.

This report also shows top 3 trends for non null or (not set) values over time, to see if there might have been a spike at a set time for a high preforming parameter. Lastly it shows a breakdown for the top 3 and a quick count of (not set).

We will never have zero (not set) values due to google HyperLogLog++ algorithm, but if (not set) has a higher count then the rest of the events? They should have conversations with the event owner. They can also deep dive the parameter values to help pinpoint problems.

Example I see not set on element_type for an asc_cta_interaction. I click the [+] icon and I can now see a CTA with “Search” is missing this value, I can hit [+] again and see its on a custom page only, and I can hit [+] one last time to see the event owner = inset owner name here.

A Big Thank You

I want to thank Dustin Lester and Colleen Harris from DealerOn for building these tools to benefit all automotive dealers. These templates will allow dealers to custom the reports and add similar detail reporting for VDP or digital retailing tools. This is the beginning of an educational effort to start using GA4 data powered by the ASC standard 1.1.

Dustin and Colleen will be joining me at MRC to offer a 2-hour workshop on GA4 reporting and data analysis. These templates will be provided for all registered attendees so they can load them up on their laptops before they arrive.

I encourage dealers to send at least one person to MRC to bring back these templates as well as the knowledge that will acquire on CDP technologies, Data Hygiene, Identity Resolution, AI applications for sales and service, DVA, Connected Retailing, API activations, and more insights on the future of automotive retailing.

Dealer and OEM tickets can be purchased here: https://modernretailingconference.com/