Have you made the move to Google Analytics 4, yet?

Author: Seb Gach

With Google Analytics 4, a new era of performance marketing has arrived. Are you ready??

Google has transformed its popular Universal Analytics platform with the launch of Google Analytics 4 (GA4). GA4 will change how marketers plan, execute and report their marketing efforts. With a sizeable learning curve heading your way, it's worth getting up to speed now.??

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What is GA4??

Google Analytics 4 marks a big shift in how we measure marketing success. Rather than measure web page sessions, bounce rates and unique visits, it will instead shine a light on engagement and cross-platform behaviour.??

It will also introduce a new event-based model, meaning the focus of GA4 is on providing insight across the entire customer lifecycle rather than just how well one particular campaign or web page performs.??

Why the change??

According to Google, 2 of the main reasons for this switch to GA4 are: changes in user behaviour and privacy standards.?

Digital technology has changed how people interact with organisations. Lightning-quick, mobile-first and highly personalised customer experiences are expected. To do this well, a data-driven customer-first approach is required. And Universal Analytics left marketers wanting in these areas.??

GA4 is a modern platform for modern marketing.??

What’s new with GA4??

1. A new look – The first big transformation is the visuals. There’s a new dashboard, user interface and navigation. This allows you to follow a single user over time and across devices so reporting is more accurate.?
2. New metrics – There are new metrics designed to measure engagement across platforms, devices and channels. New metrics include engaged sessions, engagement rate and average engagement time. These new metrics shows a more accurate view of user engagement than the page views and bounce rate metrics used by Universal Analytics.??
3. Events – GA4 handles data in a different way to Universal Analytics. Whilst UA groups data into sessions, GA4 collects and stores data as events. An event is the measure of a specific interaction or occurrence on your website or app – this provides insight on what is happening.??
4. Cross and multi-platform – GA4 brings reporting on app and website usage together (not necessarily in one report). In fact, when in development, GA4 was given the code name “App + Web”. This provides greater understanding of the customer journey.?
5. Improved AI and data privacy – GA4 is powered by the latest machine learning technology. And data privacy is one of the areas to really benefit from this upgrade. The way it handles IP addresses of users make GA4 more privacy-friendly, helping users comply with GDPR.?

How does this affect you??

Universal Analytics will stop processing new data on July 1 this year, although the final deadline to download data from UA is January 1, 2024. However, we strongly recommend migrating as soon as possible as you are unable to migrate date automatically from UA to GA4. You will have to manually “re-create” the data in the new GA4 property. So the earlier you migrate, the more insights you will see available in GA4.?

You should also know that not all metrics and set ups will be available, so it’s important to identify what items can and cannot be re-created.??

What are the next steps??

The obvious next steps, if you haven’t already, is to:?

1. Create a GA4 property and set it up.?
2. Start migrating and recreating individual items that are important to your business, such as events, goals, conversions and audiences.??
3. Archive Universal Analytics data – you need to download the UA data before the July 1, 2023 deadline (July 1, 2024 for Analytics 360 properties).?

Now the not so obvious next steps.

Unlike Universal Analytics, GA4’s metrics are more customer-centric and focuses on understanding user behaviour. Metrics such as engagement rate, active users and conversion rates all measure the interactions between the user and the website/app. This suggests that websites should be more interactive to improve performance. So maybe the next step is to think about adapting the structure of your website to align with the new GA4 engagement metrics.?

Read more about our insights on GA4 in our blog: The ultimate Google Analytics 4 survival guide. ???