Is GA4 the Finished Article?

I really think we need to talk about the elephant in the room.?

It’s less than a month until we bid farewell to the oh-so-familiar face of Universal Analytics and embrace Google’s new(ish) analytics property. This is a pretty huge change, and frankly the whole thing feels a little slapdash.?

In my opinion, the support from Google has been less than adequate. They’ll give you a hand creating an account, transferring code and processing data, but that’s about it. Anything more (collecting conversion or ecommerce data etc.) and you’re on your own. I don’t think they need to be spoon feeding us instructions, but the disconnect between GA4 and Universal Analytics in terms of usability and interface is startling, so a little more guidance would have been nice. Maybe this is why so many businesses have left it to the last minute to make the switch?

The finished product or a work in progress?

I’m all for progress; updates are necessary and change is inevitable. Google wants to kill off third party cookies and improve privacy compliance which is, of course, a good thing. But is a hard cut to a GA4 really the way to do this? Universal Analytics has been around long enough to feel relatively polished. Now, it feels as if we’re being moved over to an unfinished product, without much in the way of migration support.

I’m sure I’m not the only one who finds the whole GA4 UI a bit clunky. Sure, you can still find all the data you need, but it’s called something else now, so you’ll have to set up a new report and all the rest that comes with it. Within UA, Google offered us a number of pre configured data sets, available at the click of a button. In GA4, this isn’t the case. I guess the idea is to enable a bespoke approach to data analysis from the get go, but it feels like a step backwards in terms of usability.

Will it get better?

Of course, GA4 is destined for improvement and I have no doubt that it will be a much better tool in the long run, but the journey from Universal Analytics has been jarring to say the least. Aside from a few migration support documents and a doomsday-esque timer, Google hasn't done much to make life easy for businesses.

Sure, all the features we know and love from Universal Analytics are hidden somewhere within GA4, but why not prioritise backwards compatibility before rendering the previous property obsolete? With any luck, it won’t take too much getting used to.

If there’s a lesson in all of this, perhaps it’s how not to rolI out a new version of such a business critical piece of software as Google Analytics.?

I can’t be the only one feeling a little underwhelmed by Google’s less than pragmatic approach… What are your thoughts?