Site Traffic
The Site Traffic section shows session volume, channel mix, and conversion rates for your connected store — powered exclusively by Google Analytics 4. It’s the traffic picture sitting behind the Brand Overview and Sales numbers: where visitors came from, how many converted, and how that mix is shifting.
Channel breakdown
Section titled “Channel breakdown”Traffic and conversion by GA4 channel group — Organic Search, Paid Search, Paid Social, Email, Direct, Referral, and others.
Header metrics: Total Sessions, Total Purchases, Conversion Rate, Purchases per Session. The table adds Default Channel Group, Total Revenue, and per-channel conversion rate.
Use it to see which channels drive the most traffic versus the most purchases, spot conversion-rate differences between channels, and track channel-mix shifts over time. Channel groupings follow GA4’s Default Channel Group rules; custom groupings configured in GA4 may not propagate, so confirm against GA4’s own reports.
Campaign performance tabs
Section titled “Campaign performance tabs”Site traffic broken down by UTM parameters from GA4, across tabs:
- Source/Medium —
utm_sourceandutm_mediumcombined. - Campaign —
utm_campaignrollup. - Content —
utm_content, where used.
Use it to diagnose specific campaign performance, compare campaign-level conversion rates, and reconcile against the originating ad platform’s campaign data.
Daily trends
Section titled “Daily trends”Site traffic plotted at the daily level — sessions, users, conversion rate, and purchases — with no auto-rollup, so individual-day events stay visible. It’s the surface for diagnosing day-of impact for launches and promos, spotting sudden spikes (PR, viral content, paid pushes), and confirming the date of a traffic regression. Switch Group By to weekly if the daily pattern is too noisy.
Traffic attribution
Section titled “Traffic attribution”Traffic attribution determines which source a session or purchase gets credited to. GA4 uses its own model — data-driven for properties with enough conversion volume, falling back to last-click for smaller ones — configurable in GA4 itself. Site Traffic dashboards use GA4’s attribution directly; the Paid Media dashboard uses each ad platform’s platform-reported attribution, which is why the same conversion can show different values in the two places. Both are correct under their respective models.
UTM hygiene matters. If campaigns don’t use consistent UTM parameters, their traffic falls into Direct or (other) in the Channel breakdown rather than the intended channel — clean UTM tagging on the source side is what makes these dashboards trustworthy.
Common questions
Section titled “Common questions”Why don’t Site Traffic sessions match the GA4 UI?
GA4’s Realtime and Acquisition reports use different defaults (default channel grouping, attribution model) than the API. Compare on GA4’s Acquisition → Traffic Acquisition report with default settings before treating a gap as a sync issue.
Why is so much traffic showing as Direct?
Direct is GA4’s bucket for sessions with no detectable source — usually missing or inconsistent UTM tags, or app/in-email clicks that strip the referrer. Tighten UTM tagging to reduce it.