A comparison of Universal Analytics and Google Analytics 4
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In this blog, we cover the subject of Google Analytics- its versions, purpose and all the fuss behind the UA to GA4 migration.?
Every business strives to gain customer attention. Tracking website traffic through an analytics tool is one of the most important ways to understand how much of your efforts are fruitful and in vain. Basically, any analytics tool helps understand and identify what is working and what is not and which aspect of your website could be improved.
Google is the most popular search engine globally; over 90% of web users use Google. It features a free tool called Google Analytics, the most popular web analytics tool in the world. Approximately 56% of websites use Google Analytics to measure and analyze web traffic.
In this blog, we elucidate all you need to know about Google Analytics and shed light on the transition of Google Analytics from UA to the next generation of analytics- GA4.?
What is Google Analytics?
Google Analytics is a free tool to assess, monitor and report web traffic and data. It helps decipher visitor activity along with tracking and analysing the important data on your website. Google Analytics reports help businesses closely monitor the customer journey and augment the return on investment of their marketing efforts.
What is the role of Google Analytics in digital marketing?
Google Analytics accumulates all the digital analytics together. It enables you to compare the performance of the diverse marketing channels and streamline it with the actions users take on your website/ application or both. Even though Google Analytics aggregates a colossal amount of data just through a single tag on your website, it is important to create reports depending on your business needs, keeping in view the elements truly meaningful and beneficial for your business.
Let’s understand with an example. The Google Analytics of an e-commerce store will show you information about the user activity of all the product pages on your website, but it is insufficient. The proper configuration of e-commerce tracking is essential to understanding and learning customer behaviour deeply. It will connect all the marketing channels, the pages that users view, the actions they take and the transactions they make.?
Similarly, if the purpose of a website is lead generation, setting up conversions in Google Analytics can greatly help you understand the factors that are helping you generate leads. Hence, a clear understanding of all the possibilities of Google Analytics to augment your marketing efforts is imperative for digital marketers, even though you are not well-versed in how to configure it.
Some key aspects of Digital Marketing that Google Analytics help with:
What are the different versions and upgrades of Google Analytics?
Google Analytics is the most popular web analytics service. It was launched in November 2005 after Google acquired a popular web measurement tool called Urchin. By 2019, Google Analytics became the most used web analytics service. It has been updated several times and is currently in its 4th generation, also known as GA4.
Mentioned below are the different generations of Google Analytics:?
2005- Urchin by Google??
2007- Classic Google Analytics?
2012- Universal Analytics?
2020- Google Analytics 4
?In 2019, Google released a beta version of Google Analytics property- Web properties + App properties. One year later, in October 2020, Google launched the next iteration of Google Analytics; GA4. One of the most striking characteristics of GA4 is its integration with Google’s BigQuery by default. Before this, it was limited to GA 360. The GA4 properties streamline the evaluation of all the user interactions and events on your website and app. Another key feature of GA4 is that instead of monitoring page views, it monitors data as events, which makes tracking more flexible.?
Why are Digital Marketers struggling with GA4?
To put it precisely, GA4 and UA are very different. Thus, marketers require time to learn and upskill themselves with the complete interface. Although the UX of GA4 is less crowded than UA, it is not as intuitive as it was. In UA, all the reports were available within two clicks, but GA4 demands users to configure and create their reports on the go. GA4 requires digital marketers to be well-versed in its proper functionality to leverage its benefits. The section below highlights the key differences and similarities between GA4 and UA. It will help you gain a deep understanding of this transition in Google Analytics.
Key differences and similarities between Universal Analytics (UA) and Google Analytics 4 (GA4)
As mentioned above, the user interface of Universal Analytics and GA4 is very different. For website owners who have not been readily using UA to analyze their website data, it will take some time to explore, identify and learn about the properties, metrics, etc.
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?UA has a large number of readymade reports, whereas GA4 does not have standard reports and requires users to create them as they progress.
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?Unlike UA, which is based on properties such as page views and sessions, GA4 is based on a single property called events.
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Conversion tracking is a tad little complicated in GA4 in comparison to UA. In UA, page views inspect the user interactions, which causes a lag in data collection as it does not pay heed to interactions such as the number of times a specific video is watched or clicked. All interactions are classified as events in GA4, thereby analyzing is more flexible.
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UA require the creation of property separately to analyze the data for mobile apps. In contrast to UA, GA4 tracks the data from your mobile app by default under a single platform. This gives users an elaborate outlook on how your customers are exploring your website.
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There is no limit to the time duration for which UA stores your website data. GA4 saves your data for a maximum of 14 months. Also, under UA, the data was available and visible within a single day. GA4 takes two days to make the data visible.
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Privacy is one of the critical points of consideration for the GA4 update. GA4 allows data collection without third-party cookies or IP addresses. Replacing them, Google is using first-party cookies along with AI to eliminate the data gaps. UA has been under fire for its notorious usage of third-party cookies. This privacy upgrade with GA4 is a robust step in making Google Analytics compliant with several privacy law bodies such as GDPR.
Conclusion
There are a lot of claims that GA4 is better than UA and its not surprising as it is a well-thought and planned upgrade by Google after considering aspects like security. Although the change in interface and creation of reports does seem annoying initially, with practice the users will find it to be faster, flexible and more user-friendly. The most effective way to learn using GA4 efficiently is through its hand on usage. July 1, 2023, is the deadline for website owners to migrate from UA to GA4. Website owners must set up GA4 before the deadline if they do not wish to lose the analytics data.?
Author: Hanaa Zakawat Husain
Content Writer, Etisalat Information Services
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