What’s Changing with Google Analytics 4 (GA4)

Data Collection from Both Websites and Mobile Apps

Google Analytics 4 outperforms a Universal Analytics property in tracking, reporting and insights. Google Analytics 4 is a web analytics service that allows tracking traffic and engagements in websites and mobile apps. It can also collect data from websites, mobile apps, or both, whereas universal Analytics only supports websites.

Machine Learning for Valuable Insights

Machine learning is also used in Google Analytics 4 to capture valuable insights. This helps in understanding user engagements across multiple devices, platforms and domains. These thoughtful insights provide better marketing and business decisions.

Event-Based Model as Opposed to Only Cookies

Google Analytics 4 operates across platforms and does not rely on data from cookies like Universal Analytics but uses an event-based data model to deliver user-centric measurement.

Codeless Event Tracking

This feature makes it easier for marketers to track and measure user activity on the web and mobile devices, such as page scroll or video play, without adding code or setting up event tracking in Google Tag Manager. Within Universal Analytics, event tracking requires additional processing, including latency and data unavailable until the following day.

Comprehensive Privacy Controls

Although Universal Analytics offers a variety of privacy controls, Google Analytics 4 is designed with privacy at its core to provide a better experience for users. The comprehensive and granular controls available in Google Analytics 4 for data collection and usage helps businesses manage evolving user expectations and needs. Google Analytics 4 will no longer store IP addresses, these controls are necessary to protect and control users’ data.

Here are Few Ways Google Analytics 4 can Support Businesses

Cross-Platform Tracing

Universal Analytics measured user engagements separately for websites and mobile apps. With GA4 now combining both properties into one: Firebase Analytics data from apps and Google Analytics data from websites, we could easily get a complete view of customer journey.

Tracking Complete Customer Journey

There's a new section in Google Analytics 4 called Life Cycle, under which reports on Acquisition, Engagement, Monetization, and Retention can be found. These categories also align with the customer journey. It's now easier than ever to capture customer behavior and get insights into where marketers should focus more or change their strategy. The acquisition and engagement reports could tell you which of your awareness campaigns or paid ads are working and which types of content bring the most value to your users. The monetization and retention reports show data on revenue and how well you are retaining your customers. Google Analytics 4's ability to patch together the user journey comes from its user-centric analytics and event-driven data model. So if a user first visits your website on their desktop computer, then browses through your products on their smartphone, and eventually purchases through your app, Google Analytics 4 gives you the tools to track all these events together and give you a complete view of the customer journey.

Intelligent Tracking

With ever evolving new privacy laws enforced by the government and regulatory bodies, we cannot entirely rely on cookies for user data collection. GA4 uses Artificial Intelligence and machine learning that rely not heavily on cookies to track users.

Purchase and Revenue Prediction

In GA4, you could predict which users are likely to make a purchase in the next month and revenue that would be generated by their purchase. Predictive metrics like purchase probability, churn probability and revenue prediction can be used to predict audiences and create targeted campaigns.

Return on Investment

With such a highly insightful analytics report, you can strategically plan a successful marketing campaign for the target audience that would lead to many purchase conversions which would generate a better return on investment.

Our GA4 Services

No matter where you are in your GA4 journey, we have services that can help

GA4 Readiness Assessment

Evaluate GA4 and align business requirements.

Current Measurement State Evaluation

Ensure your reporting suite follows best practices and has utmost confidence in your data.

GA4 Migration Plan

Ensure you have a clear set of instructions to translate your current measurement framework and configure GA4.

GA4 Deployment

Establish a parallel reporting structure with GA4 and your current measurement framework resulting in a dual deployment.

Google Analytics Roadmap

Evaluate proceeding with deployment of Google Analytics including GA4 at this time.

Projects to Leverage the Full Capabilities of GA4

Funnel Analysis, Path Analysis, LTV Analysis.

Data Streams, Dashboards & Reports

Blending Data Sources (across all measurement tools), Updating Dashboards & Reports, LTV Analysis.

Advanced Analytics Projects

Audience Strategy and Development, UX Measurement & Optimization, Predictive Analytics, Basket Analysis.

FAQs

When Do I need to migrate to GA4?

Users of Universal Analytics need to migrate to GA4 by 1 July 2023 and users of Universal Analytics 360 need to migrate by 1 October 2023.

We recommend starting your transition at the earliest so you can run GA4 and UA side by side and start populating GA4 with data to power machine learning and year-over-year analysis.

Will I be double charged for using both GA4 and UA?

No, 360 users will not be charged for using both GA4 and UA during the migration period. Google will not charge GA4 360 users for data collection until the UA deprecation date. The standard version of analytics will continue to be free.

Can I integrate all my products into GA4?

Google releases new GA4 integrations across Google products and platforms. Below are resources for select integrations:

  • GA4 Integration with Display & Video 360
  • GA4 Integration with Search Ads 360
  • GA4 Integration with Optimize

Ready to level up your website data analysis and reporting with a Google Analytics 4?

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