5 stages to a seamless GA4 transition

On 1st July 2023, Google Analytics, as we know it, is going to change.

From then, Google will stop tracking new data as they launch GA4, their next generation measurement solution. Users will still have access to data in the original platform until 1st January 2024 but, to continue tracking after July this year, you’ll need to have GA4 in place.

Here our team share their tips to set up and implementing your GA4 account properly, but more importantly, in such a way that the metrics really count for your business.

Some of our clients have the capacity and capabilities to implement their GA4 framework in-house and, for others, we’re on call as a helping hand to do some or all these points. If you’re interested in engaging the support of our team, just drop us an email to [email protected] and we’ll get back to you to set up an appointment.

1.????Audit your existing Analytics and Google Tag Manager accounts

What we often find is that, over time, many different people get involved with setting up tracking capabilities in any given analytics account. Sometimes, these have been incorrectly set-up or have become depreciated - this can lead to some configurations not tracking anything and others doubling up on data and providing false metrics. Having a real deep dive and closer look at your data will help you to understand how your account has been set up and configured and it’ll give you a strong foundation to develop your Measurement Plan (step 2).

2.????Create a measurement plan

Developing a matrix that aligns your business goals to your website goals is a good first step to design your measurement plan. Once you have identified Website Goals that’ll move your business forward, you can determine the Events that need to be tracked and Key Performance Indicators that relate to these events. These KPIs will provide you with quantitative metrics to report on and having your account configured in this way will also give you a month-on-month review of how your website goals are performing and how they’re aligning to your overall business goals.

3.????Create an implementation plan

Your implementation plan takes your measurement plan and defines the types of tags to create. This covers the event names that will be passed to GA4, together with any variables and/or parameters that need to be set-up as custom dimensions or metrics. At this stage, you should also define the triggers that will be required including the conditions and any additional configuration, such as custom variables, which allow the tags to submit the correct data to GA4. As part of this process, you might find that your web developer needs to add additional code to the site to achieve the defined objectives.

4.????Implementation and testing

During this stage of the process, setting up and configuring your GTM and the GA4 accounts/properties will enable you to complete the configuration of the Implementation Plan. The most important factor here is testing each variable, parameter, trigger and tag to ensure that the data is being correctly submitted to GA4. Once you are happy that everything has been configured as it should be you can deploy the set-up to the live environment.

5.????Post implementation reporting

The most exciting bit! Remember though, that you’ll probably need to give it some time before sufficient data can be gathered for reporting purposes (usually up to one month).

If you’d like support or advice in setting up your GA4 account, get in touch via our website and we can arrange a chat with our team.