Google Analytics 4 - The big change for GA users. What you need to know and what you need to do now.

Last November I started a full year of virtual (The Conference formerly known as) Conversion Hotel sessions. Unfortunately, #CH2020 could not be a 3-day live event, but I'm very happy with the virtual set-up of 1 virtual session per month until November 2021.

Like the real event, I asked the community of past attendees and ticket notification list members what conversion optimization and experimentation topics they would like to see as keynotes. One of the most wanted topics was to demystify Google Analytics 4. Which made me a happy man, being a recovering web analyst who became a conference organizer.

For a lot of growth and conversion specialists, this new Google Analytics release came out of nowhere. And while still being some sort of a Beta release, GA4 is pushed as the default option when creating analytics accounts. It’s the rebranding of the web+app tracking that was launched last year, but not so many people worried about the new tracking solution back then. Now everyone is worried. Around the web, stories started popping up about event tracking and how differently it works (causing measurement problems for many).

Time to demystify this all and get an understanding of what to do now.

Charles Farina, Google Analytics 4 keynote

I managed to convince Charles Farina to become the #CH2020 speaker to take a deep dive into Google Analytics 4. Charles is leading the Google Analytics 4 initiatives at Adswerve in the US. I had seen Charles speak at the lovely Superweek conference in Hungary last year, before the whole Covid-19 crisis started, and I was impressed by his skills. He was my first go-to person when I was looking for a good GA4 speaker.

The most important change in Google Analytics 4 is the move from a hit-based data model to an event-based driven data model. Because of this new data model, there is no way to move your existing data from Universal Analytics into GA4.

The main takeaway for GA4 now

There will not be any historical (Universal Analytics) data available in GA4. This is why you want to dual-tag your site asap. Not replace Universal Analytics by GA4 yet, but dual-tag it with a simple 1 hour GA4 install which will make sure you are building up historical data in the new GA4 environment.

Some integrations are not yet available in GA4. Until the full GA4 functionality becomes available it makes sense to keep on basing your business decisions on Universal Analytics data.

The timeframe to use GA4 actively will probably be around the middle of this year. This means the advice with new sites is to also dual-tag them with Universal Analytics and GA4!

The main takeaway is - start collecting data in a new GA4 property now (which you need to do yourself) and move over to GA4 once all the features you need are available.

The key features of GA4 and how they are different from Universal Analytics

1. Automatic measurement: when you implement GA4 for the first time, there will be more standard data available. You will not only measure page views, but scrolls, outbound clicks, file downloads, videos, and a few other things as well. This makes the platform more usable and easier for some of the onboarding.
2. Brand new UI: Google is rebuilding the user interface. There is completely new navigation on the left. There is a new concept of report cards, where more data is accessible than just a graph and table.
3. New identity methods: by default GA will track users through a cookie. With GA4 they added a Google signals component. This allows you to use the cross-device identity graph, to better understand how your users are connected between different platforms.
4. New real-time reports: the reports are way more interactive, and they have more attributes. For example, you now have real-time audiences and custom dimensions. This makes it great for anomaly detection.
5. Huge improvements to debugging: there is a debugging feature that allows you to easily check your test data. You simply have to turn on the Debugger extension in Chrome, which will stream real-time data into a special view in GA4.
6. More powerful audience builder: new event scoping options, time-based sequences, and exclude options.
7. New conversion tracking: there are more slots available (30 instead of 20), and they are scalable because turning them off will free up a slot. Now goals are not only session-based and there are way more definitions, like using audiences as conversions. You can do this with the new audience triggers feature. An audience trigger will create and send an event when a user is added to your audience. That event can then be used to create conversions.
8. New funnel reports: this feature was only available in the paid version of Google Analytics (360). Now you can create meaningful open and closed funnels in GA4 for free. Besides creating funnels, these reports allow you to view the elapsed time between steps and see the next actions of users after the funnel.
9. Improved pathing reports: interactive reports where you see the paths your users take. In these reports, you can apply events and audiences. It is also possible to use pathing backwards. For example, follow your users backwards from making a conversion.
10. Free BigQuery linking: this is the biggest change to Google Analytics. This was only available in Google Analytics 360, but it is free with GA4. With GA4, you can not do everything. BigQuery linking allows you to get all your data out of GA4 and into BigQuery, to do more advanced analytics.

Some things to keep in mind

• Universal Analytics will sample your data in reports. GA4 data is unsampled (it might still be sampled if you have more than 10 million events).
• Although GA4 is not in beta anymore, some parts like BigQuery linking still are. And Google keeps adding new features almost every week.
• There is a paid enterprise version of GA4 coming in the near future.
• If you want to use BigQuery extensively, it may cost money. But the costs are really low compared to a paid Google Analytics account.

In the meantime, I implemented GA4 tags on all my properties, which was done within 1 hour. I'm collecting data, I advise you to do the same if you are using Google Analytics.

Next event: unconference sessions on February 11th, 2021

A big thank you to Charles for this keynote. If you would like to watch the full recording and get the slides: Sign-up for this year of virtual events a the Conversion Hotel website.

The next session is an afternoon of unconference sessions at February 11th, 2021 We have free tickets available for active participants which you can claim directly here.