Are you ready for Google Analytics 4?
Monitoring your website’s key metrics and user behavior can help you to further not only the goals of your business, but also your marketing efforts. However, any digital-focused agency will tell you that the advertising technology landscape is constantly changing, and the next major change, brought on by Google, will occur on July 1, 2023.
The multinational and ubiquitous technology company is planning to cease operation of their analytics software Universal Analytics (UA), which first launched back in 2005. Since that time, Universal Analytics has become THE go-to and top choice for diagnosing and auditing website performance, largely due to the servicing being offered for free with accessible integration options. UA was largely designed to rely heavily on “cookies,” or data collected around internet user browsing habits, to record events across websites.
As data and privacy concerns mount, internet users are more frequently blocking this data from being shared with public software servers like Google Analytics, in turn hurting reporting capabilities. With each passing month over the last year, it seems more and more likely that cookies, despite how delicious the term is, may be on the way out. With that, Google is left with a need to redesign their software for a new future.
Replacing UA is Google Analytics 4, or GA4, which is the next-generation approach to tracking online analytics. New privacy laws now require websites to ask for user consent allowing cookies to track website performance. The difference with GA4 is that it reduces the complete reliance on cookies and instead utilizes Google’s advanced AI predictive data to fill in these gaps when that data is not provided upfront.
What are the Major Changes?
1. Event-Based Measurement
An event is a specific action that a user makes on a website, like clicking on a button, playing a video, submitting a form, etc. This event is what GA4 tracks, allowing you to easily set up conversion for specific events. You will still be able to see session data, but it will be more detailed and broken down into individual events. Every metric is an event and can contain its own parameters.
2. Cross-Device Tracking
GA4 merges data from across your app and websites, providing greater platform tracking and giving you a complete view of user engagement throughout your platforms.
3. Interface Design
A cleaner design with enhanced widgets.
Enhanced search tools.
Enhanced reporting allowing you to substitute standardized off-the-shelf reports with deeper customized insights. The enhanced reporting includes new pathing reports, new real-time reports, and new cross-platform reports.
4. Increased Privacy Protection
GA4 does not rely exclusively on cookies and does not store IP addresses. This is a positive move in a world where consumers and brands want increased data security.
Benefits of how an early switch-over will help you!
The switch-over from UA to GA4 may not occur until next year, but setting up GA4 in advance will help in numerous ways. Most importantly, by setting it up to run alongside UA for several months, you will be able to collect and retain data, building historical information to compare to before UA stops. That way, you can continue to use UA as your “source of truth,” giving you enough time to collect historical analytical data in GA4 before the switch-over. Without setting up GA4 now, you will lose all historical data when UA stops working; the data cannot simply be migrated, so this is critical. Furthermore, allowing GA4 more time will allow for Google’s artificial intelligence models to strengthen the understanding of your site and provide more informed insight and reporting.
