Real-World Reporting: What Stakeholders Actually Want (vs. What GA4 Gives)

The "Eyes Glaze Over" Moment

I was in a boardroom with the CMO of a mid-sized retail brand. I had spent 10 hours building the perfect GA4 Standard Report. It had everything: user exploration flow, multi-channel funnel attribution, scatter plots.

I projected it on the screen. "As you can see here, the cross-channel data-driven attribution model shows..."

Three minutes in, the CMO interrupted. "Aneek, I have one question: *Did we make more money from Facebook Ads this month than last month?*"

I looked at my scatter plot. I looked at my attribution model. I didn't have a simple "Yes/No" on the screen.

That day, I learned the golden rule of stakeholder reporting: Complexity is not a feature; it's a bug.

What Clients Actually Ask For

Clients don't ask for "events." They don't ask for "engagement rate." They ask business questions.

• "Are we growing?"
• "Is the new blog post series actually driving sales?"
• "Why is mobile performance worse than desktop?"

When you give them a raw GA4 screenshot, you aren't answering these questions. You are giving them homework. You are saying, "Here is the haystack; you find the needle."

Why Raw GA4 Confuses Them

GA4's terminology is engineer-speak. "Engaged Sessions per User." "Event Count per Session."

To a business owner, these mean nothing. They need "Leads," "Sales," and "Cost." When they see "Views" and "Users" varying wildly between two different reports (because of scoping differences), they assume the data is broken.

How I Simplified Reporting (The Looker + Sheets Combo)

I stopped showing clients GA4. Completely.

I built a "Business Health Monitor" using Looker Studio, powered by curated data in Google Sheets.

The "One Screen" Rule
The first page of my report answers the CMO's question in 5 seconds.

• Spend: $10,000 (Red/Green arrow)
• Revenue: $40,000 (Red/Green arrow)
• ROAS: 4.0 (Red/Green arrow)

The "Plain English" Analysis
Below the scorecards, I don't just put a chart. I put a text box. (This comes from my Google Sheet commentary column).

"Facebook Ads ROAS dropped 10% because CPMs rose during Black Friday. However, volume increased 50%, resulting in higher total profit."

That sentence is worth more than 10 charts.

A Real World Pivot

One client was about to fire their email agency because "Open rates are down." They saw a line chart in a default report trending down.

I pulled the data into Sheets and segmented it by "Customer Lifecycle Stage."

We found that open rates for new customers were actually up 20%. The drop was coming from a huge list of old, inactive leads they had uploaded recently. The aggregate metric was lying.

I presented this "New vs. Old" view in Looker Studio. The decision flipped instantly. They kept the agency and purged the old email list.

The Lesson: Your report is not just a reflection of reality; it creates reality for the stakeholder. Design it with the intent to clarify, not to impress.