Google Analytics 4
Google Analytics 4 (GA4) simplifies the process of tracking customers and their activity. Universal Analytics is past is usefullness and has become obsolete in todays multi device, multi channel world. Tracking both apps and web behavior has become very complex. GA4 fixes that by combinining firebase and google universal analytics into one platform. If you work with cross platform tracking you will notice immediately how much easier it is to work with your data in GA4. Now you use one streamlined system compared to always jumping between the two different reporting systems.
GA4 will now assign user ID’s automatically and apply them across all reporting and insights. Session based reporting has been removed and replaced with event based reporting, which treats all actions as individual events. This change removes duplicate multiple user visit data and increases the accuracy of the reporting overall.
Simplify Cross Platform Tracking
- Data from app engagement is now more important to businesses.
- Tracking both web and mobile app behavior together is complicated.
- App analytics is typically stand alone from websites tracking.
- Tracking conversions on websites is complex but should be easier
Automatically Collect Events
A key feature of the technology is that Events are automatically collected and come with improved measurement. The improved measurment tracks: page views, scrolls, outbound clicks, site searches, video engagement and downloads. Moreover, should you have the need, there are a total of 25 variables that can be enabled and set up for event tracking. In order to differentiate between events, we recommended that you also install tag manager and utilize tags and triggers for effective conversion tracking.
If your business has an app, Google Analytics 4 will now automatically collect a list of events for both IOS and Android, and no additional code is needed to implement.
Upgrading Your UA
Officially the date UA Analytics is being retired is July 2023. Best practices would be to install Analytics 4 now and adopt the change sooner than later. Google setup assistant makes the transition very easy and straightforward, but the standard reports are now different and may take some time getting used to. Additionally some common reports don’t even exist anymore and need to be built from scratch.
You should be aware that GA4 only collects data going forward, and will not backfill historical data. Avoid any gaps in your year over year data and Upgrade your existing Universal analytics to a GA4.