Google Analytics 4: The 12 month countdown
It's the 1st July, which means it’s exactly 12 months until Google “Universal” Analytics will stop processing new hits.
It therefore seems like a great time to remind anyone who hasn’t acted on this yet, don’t panic, but YOU REALLY SHOULD BE SETTING UP GA4 NOW!
Here’s a reminder of the background, some thoughts on what you should be doing and some links to useful resources.
[Thanks to Chris Lewis, Jamie Wilmott, Jill Quick, Claire Blacker, Jonathan Moore & Jon Boon for their input. If you need help with GA4 set up and implementation, it's likely I'd steer you towards one of them for assistance].
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Background: Google released a newer version (v4) of Analytics in 2019. They’ve also confirmed the deadline for the “switch off” of Universal Analytics (v3). The new version is built from scratch and should enable (a) joined up user journeys across websites and apps, (b) better machine learning technology for modelling and insights and (c) be more privacy conscious & work without 3rd party cookies.
The key dates:
Remember: You should act now and run it in parallel with UA. GA data is most useful when comparing trends across time and the sooner you set up GA4, the more historic data you’ll have access to. But remember you won’t be able to compare UA and GA4 data, the data is not directly comparable. (Although it can be useful to compare headline metrics when running initial tests, just to sense check tracking has been installed correctly).
What to do now (Things that can’t wait)
Setup: ??Create your (1) GA4 Property, (2) “Data Stream” and (3) GA4 configuration Tag
Amend Property Settings:
Plus, consider how you want to migrate any audiences and conversions you use (not to optimize to yet, but to build the data).
What to do next (Things that in an ideal world you’d do now, but you could do over the coming few weeks and months)
Conversions & ecommerce
If you’re already using Google Tag Manager you can use the existing GTM UA triggers, but remember to create the parameters in GA4 too.
Note that the ecommerce data layer is the only data layer that won’t translate from UA to GA4. But, there are plenty of community plugins in GTM that do the UA to GA4 migration for you. The one recommended to me by Jon Boon is from Mateo Zambon.
Backup: Store the log of all raw events from GA4 in BigQuery.
This is recommended for larger organisations, in order to take advantage of the possibilities to enrich and leverage your. For smaller organisations, it’s still advisable if you have the capability. ?
Start using the data: Familiarise yourself with the reports in GA4 and start to consider how you’ll use them in your reporting. Remember that the data is NOT directly comparable with UA, so it’s recommended to start building separate reports which you use to complement UA data, not to integrate alongside.
No doubt things will evolve over the next 12 months, but don't think you can sit back and wait for a different, "magic" solution. Google have been very clear about the changes, so I recommend pro-actively moving with the tide.
Further reading:
Krista Seiden | Summary of the changes > RIP-universal-analytics-hello-ga4/
Jill Quick | Phased approach to GA4 set up > Ga4-migration-plan-the-helicopter-method
Simo Ahava | GA4 & GTM ecommerce set up > GA4-ecommerce-guide-google-tag-manager
*Check with your Data Protection Officer that this retention period is acceptable.?
Chief Marketing Officer | Product MVP Expert | Cyber Security Enthusiast | @ GITEX DUBAI in October
2 年Ryan, thanks for sharing!