The Deal with G4?!
By Senta Johnson
Out with the old and in with the new. July 1, 2023, will mark the transition between the standard, Universal Analytics to Google Analytics 4. What does this mean for analytics teams? We are here to answer your questions.
What is GA-4?
To keep up with the evolving online market and privacy standards, Google set an end date for Universal Analytics. For years, Universal Analytics helped businesses monitor their website engagement and marketing performance. The good news: GA-4 serves the same purpose.
To state it simply, the Google Analytics 4 platform measures traffic and engagement from both websites and apps. This will be extremely helpful to businesses that use both. There will be a range of metrics that show whether you are achieving your marketing goals.
Additionally, GA-4 collects event-based data, rather than session-based. Event-based analytics is primarily concerned with observing user behavior based on mouse clicks, scrolls, and other website interactions. It covers real-time analytics and the processing of historical event data. This is in contrast to Universal Analytics’ use of session-based data, which only measures a user’s actions performed on your site.
There is an array of privacy controls including cookieless measurement and behavioral and conversion modeling. A cookieless tracking solution enables marketers to track each user who visits their website by using scripts that only run when they visit a webpage. Then, the behavioral and conversion modeling allows for accurate conversion attribution without identifying users. So, when a user rejects cookie consent, we can still collect necessary audience insight.
What can I do with GA-4?
GA-4 enables you to measure traffic and engagement across your websites and apps.
Some report features will allow you to access:
- Overviews of how users landed on your website
- Other users’ actions after reaching your website
- Reviews of general demographic and device information
All of these, and more, are designed to help you better understand your audiences’ journeys. GA-4 acts as a general upgrade to stay relevant with our customers. There is more flexibility and a means to predict user behavior while upholding user privacy.
Should I be worried?
As of July 1, 2023, Universal Analytics will no longer process new data. So, we will all have to make the inevitable shift to GA-4. The transition is seamless, though, because GA-4 directly connects to Universal Analytics. You will be able to migrate configurations from your existing Universal Analytics property to GA-4 property.
A lot is changing, and that can be reason for concern. Not to fear, though, GA-4 provides major benefits to marketers such as cross-platform analysis and more accurate predictions of user behavior.
In short, better data collection means better informed marketing strategy.
If you want to get started with GA-4, you can set it up before July. That way, you have time to understand the system and take advantage of its new abilities.