Since its launch in 2020, Google has given a deadline for the Google Analytics tool to be updated to its newest release, known as GA4. And it ends on July 1st. So if you still use Universal Analytics, know that it will cease to exist and Google Analytics 4 will take your place. In this article I will explain why.
Contents
Toggle- What is Google Analytics 4
- Tracking between web platforms and applications
- Events
- Updated interface in GA4
- Monitoring
- Artificial Intelligence is part of GA4
- More standard channel groupings
- What you need to do
- Some important and useful tips:
- Conclusion
What is Google Analytics 4
While the Universal Analytics uses sessions, which are essentially a series of page views, GA4, is built around the concept of events. Events can be from page views to clicks, forms uploads, or custom events you define yourself.
This change in GA4 architecture has important implications:
- You can collect much more data than Universal Analytics.
- It can provide much more insights about what people are doing on their website or application.
- It can be used to track pretty much anything, not just web traffic.
Tracking between web platforms and applications
One of the most interesting features of GA4 is the ability to track users on multiple devices and platforms, where you can get a full view of how your users interact with your brand, whether on your website, mobile app or both.
Get used to the “data flows”, which are essentially different views of your data that you can create based on certain criteria. For example, you can analyze all web traffic, all application traffic or a whole country traffic.
The other great advantage of this is that it makes it much easier to track conversions as you can see the entire journey of the user from start to finish, regardless of the device or platform it is using.
Events
Google Analytics 4 offers more standard event tracking ready for use. The events are divided into four categories.
-Events collected automatically, such as page displays or scrolls. -Improving Measurement Events, such as file download or video progress.
-Recommended events, such as login or registration.
And for everything else that is not in the categories mentioned above, it is possible to create so-called custom events.
These events, combined with associated parameters, mean that the tracking of events in GA4 is quite flexible. You will no longer be looking for the event category, action or label, but using parameters to describe the action. For example, capturing a subscription to a newsletter from your Blog.
Some important links to better understand about events, direct from Google source:
Updated interface in GA4
If you are a long-time analytics user, it may take some time to get used to the new Google Analytics 4 look. The side menu is condensed into four upper-level areas:
- Reports: where you will find your data
- Explore: where you can create your custom reports
- Advertising: where you can measure the impact of your advertising
- Configure: where you can configure your events, conversions and audiences.
Some family resources were moved within these four areas, for example:
- The real-time user report is now in Reports
- The audience(s) is now in Configure
- Acquisition is now in > Reports Lifecycle
- Conversions are now in Configure
The focus is on engaged users, being a user engaged in the one where a session lasts more than 10 seconds, a user views more than 2 screens or an engagement event is registered.
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Monitoring
Stronger privacy legislation, such as LGPD (General Data Protection Act) means that many organizations lose data from users of those who choose not to be tracked Google has released consent mode to allow some level of tracking while still complying.
This will not allow you to segment or identify users, but it allows you to continue tracking content, conversions, and assignments in some circumstances. The tracking tag is dynamic and is controlled by the user's privacy settings.
Prevention of false data
A problem that is common in Universal Analytics, the insertion of false data or spam traffic, where with only one ID owned malicious people can insert false traffic into your account using the evaluation protocol, has been solved by Google.
With the update of Google Analytics 4, it is now virtually impossible to insert fake traffic into your account because the ratings protocol hits are forced to include a secret key that is not publicly available.
Artificial Intelligence is part of GA4
And that might please the people who bet and invest in the digital for sales. Google Analytics 4 is machine learning centered. For businesses or businesses that have high traffic sites, you can take advantage of this intelligence, which includes:
- Probability of purchase – the probability of an active user in the last 28 days to register a specific conversion event in the next seven days
- Probability of churn (cancellation) – the probability of a user who has been active in the last seven days, not being active in the next seven days.
- Expected revenue – expected revenue from purchase conversions in the next 28 days of a user who has been active in the last 28 days.
Let's say you're running a campaign on Google Ads and Facebook Ads. GA4 can use probabilistic matching to combine the data from these two campaigns and provide a unique insight into their performance.
This is just one example of how the use of machine learning by GA4 can provide insights that simply would not be possible with Universal Analytics.
More standard channel groupings
In Google Analytics 4 there are more standard channel groupings for you to explore, based on common UTM tags. These channels are now much easier to manage on GA4. Some of the new channel groupings include:
- organic purchases
- purchases paid
- organic video
- Video paid
- paid (other)
- audio
- SMS
- Mobile push notifications
Attention to processing time
Universal Analytics has a 24-hour processing period, which means that your data can be changed at any time during this period. With the increase in processes that need to be run on Google Analytics 4, this processing period has increased to 48 hours, so don't worry if your data takes longer to update.
What you need to do
The first thing is to remember to migrate Universal Analytics to Google Analytics 4 by June 30, however it is not an automatic update and some action will be necessary on your part. If you are using Google Tag Manager, your tags will be different from before and will need to be set up again for GA4.
It is recommended that your current Universal Analytics tracking and your new GA4 tracking be run side by side, so that you can collect data on both until Universal Analytics stops working.
Some important and useful tips:
1. To configure your new GA4 property that tracks page displays and other “standard” events, make sure to set the data retention period for a maximum of 14 months. The data will not be available beyond this date range and will be deleted by Google unless you file them.
2. Implement KPI related events. Think about what information you need to capture and what events you consider important, for example, submissions of forms, queries, downloads or any destination targets that need to be changed to events.
3. For each of your events, think of what information is needed to differentiate them, for example:
- Site Contact Form
- Landing Page Form (email, name, phone)
- Files and Media (PDF, MP3, DOC)
4. If you have a virtual store, implement e-commerce events. You may need a developer to help with this.
5. Implement any other custom dimensions, tracking or reports.
6. Make a review and promote adjustments.
Conclusion
As you have accompanied here, GA4 is a great update of Universal Analytics, more powerful, more flexible and more precise. If you take data analysis seriously, you should switch to GA4 right now.
Not only will you have access to all the new features and capabilities, but you will also be able to take advantage of the continuous learning and improvement of GA4. It is important to consider that Google will discontinue Universal Analytics in July 2023, so the update will have to happen anyway.
Would you risk losing your data? We certainly don't!
If you need help setting up and installing GA4 on your website or project, Talk to me HERE. At Nvx Digital we have a specialized team that can assist you in reviewing your existing configuration and bringing more performance to your digital presence.
