Google Analytics 4, the latest version of the world’s most famous analytics platform, has been developed to provide more comprehensive and exhaustive data to marketing professionals. The new resource organization offers a view of results based on the sales funnel and customer journey, and for this reason, Google Analytics 4 has already become an essential tool, both for offering more strategic analyses and for helping companies in the decision-making process.
With Google Analytics 4, which replaced Universal Analytics in October 2020, Google has rebuilt its platform from the ground up, transforming the way data is collected to provide aggregate metrics on websites and mobile apps. Unlike previous updates, Google Analytics 4 is a completely new product.
How is Google Analytics 4 Different from Universal Analytics?
Google Analytics 4 introduces some important innovations compared to Universal Analytics. It uses, in fact, a new property model that, in addition to being used on websites, the only channels monitored by Universal Analytics, can be used also on applications or on both simultaneously.
GA4 therefore promotes greater integration between different customer channels, so as to have not only a more detailed view of organic traffic, but also of user engagement and revenue derived from paid campaigns and other actions.
In other words, Google Analytics 4 offers more strategic and comprehensive reports, so that marketing analysts have a deeper view of their results. Consequently, insights are more accurate and guide professionals towards a decision-making process much more in line with business needs.
Google Analytics 4 offers greater flexibility in its event tracking capabilities. Its new features, in fact, measure events and parameters, rather than just calculating sessions and page views.
Report visualizations and engagement metrics are much more robust and there is greater control over spam data, options that were previously lacking. Session definitions are available in multiple options and it’s possible to define conversion events based on multiple conditions.
Standard Universal Analytics properties will stop processing new hits on July 1, 2023. The 360 Universal Analytics, on the other hand, will stop processing new hits on October 1, 2023.
The 4 Best Resources of Google Analytics
Let’s see in more detail what resources are available in Google Analytics 4. Anyone using the tool will immediately notice a change in how data is presented.
The menu on the left side is now divided into four tabs presenting: Reports, Explore, Advertising, and Admin.
Reports
The Reports tab is the first in the new Google Analytics 4 resource menu and it’s from here that you access the results of the site or app. As was already the case in Universal Analytics, this tab allows you to instantly view the report summary and real-time data.
On the logo below, you immediately notice an important change: the organization of indicators follows a Life Cycle based on the stages of the sales cycle. This cycle is divided into four types of reports.
– Acquisition: focuses on directing traffic and attracting users to the site or app.
– Engagement: details the events of user interaction with the page (views, conversions, and many visitor activities).
– Monetization: presents data on revenue and sales made by an e-commerce or app, taking into account advertising revenue.
– Retention: helps analyze how many users return to the site, how the retention process works, and what is the Lifetime Value of these users (LTV).
Finally, Google Analytics 4 also presents demographic information of visitors, as well as data associated with technologies, such as the device used, browser, and operating system.
Explorations
The second tab, called Explore, offers a set of advanced techniques to go beyond reports and gain access to insights provided by the platform on the behavior of site users and customers. To provide a more detailed view and, in particular, with the aim of offering predictive indicators about the audience, Google Analytics 4 uses machine learning to analyze data.
Furthermore, it’s possible to use filters and segments to prioritize the most important information, create and save target audiences within the tool, and export this data for use on other platforms.
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One of the highlights of Google Analytics 4 is its closer proximity to Google Ads and the brand’s advertising actions. The goal is to make it easier for marketing analysts to understand the return on investment (ROI) of media to help them make better decisions.
For this, the advertising reports are divided into 3 tabs:
– Ad snapshot: shows an overview of results, such as conversion performance, channels that generate them, and the best ad performance.
– Model comparison: helps evaluate how attribution models affect the results of each of the channels used in the marketing strategy.
– Conversion paths: shows the paths followed by customers for conversion, specifying the channels, number of days to conversion, and touchpoints along the path.
Configurations
Finally, in the Configure tab, you can list and organize conversion events based on actions performed on the site or application. But it doesn’t end there. It’s also possible to configure target audience segments to more closely monitor their behavior and work with custom dimensions and metrics to collect and analyze data that Analytics 4 is unable to capture automatically.
The last option in this tab is the DebugView which allows for the configuration and monitoring of events executed on the web or apps for the purpose of debugging collected data.
Google Analytics 4: A Model Based on Users and Events
In Google Analytics 4, the focus is on users and every interaction is considered an event. This means that sessions and page views are configured as such. For example, a page_view event contains the parameters page location, page_referrer, and page_title.
This change benefits marketing professionals by allowing accurate tracking of user paths across the Web and mobile apps. In the old model, tracking was instead tied to URLs and interactions were grouped by time periods.
The new event-based data model simplifies cross-referencing information and also improves path analysis by allowing you to see how users navigate through the website and/or application.
For example, every time someone signs up for the site’s newsletter, a generate_lead event is sent to Google Analytics 4. By defining this event as a final event, you can use flow analysis to identify what users do before registering. Their behavior can be used to predict their future activity and customize the site or app to encourage sign-ups.
Events in Google Analytics 4 are grouped into four categories:
Automatically collected events
These are events that are automatically tracked after installing the basic Google Analytics 4 code. These include initial actions, such as page_view, session_start, and first_visit.
Enhanced measurement events
Automatically collected events, such as scrolling, site search, video engagement, and outbound clicks, which can be enabled or disabled to suit the website or app. These events allow you to go beyond page views to measure user behavior and content success.
Recommended Events
In this case, these are events that Google recommends organizing based on the reference sector. For example, the recommended events for e-commerce are add_to_cart, purchase, and begin_checkout.
Custom Events
Events and settings that can be configured based on your specific needs. For example, if you manage an e-commerce site, you can decide to set up an event after begin_checkout to see what users do when faced with an error. Their activity can then be used to improve the payment process. In addition to custom events, Google Analytics 4 can automatically record most relevant events without the need to configure them separately using the global site tag (gtag.js) or Google Tag Manager.
In Google Analytics 4, Machine Learning Replaces Cookies
With the introduction of GDPR laws in Europe and the strengthening of online privacy, it has become more difficult to track users with cookies. As a result, Google is adapting to these new provisions and third-party cookies will be progressively eliminated: Firefox and Safari already block them by default. By July 2023, Google plans to do the same.
Using machine learning and artificial intelligence, Google Analytics 4 makes the need for cookies obsolete. Google’s artificial intelligence automatically alerts you to product data trends, also giving access to predictive metrics to help identify users and actions that could lead to a purchase. With this data, you can anticipate customer actions and personalize marketing campaigns to focus on high-value audience segments.
With Google Analytics 4, Fewer Bugs in Execution
Debugging in Universal Analytics can be difficult to determine if a problem is related to Google Tag Manager or the website. Google Analytics 4 helps users overcome these difficulties by introducing a real-time debug report called DebugView in the interface that allows you to monitor event data as soon as it occurs, as well as verify settings. You can also isolate and view user data from devices where debugging is enabled.
Additionally, if you use the Google Tag Manager Chrome extension, you can import data directly into DebugView in real-time to quickly find any issues.
Free Connection to BigQuery from Google Analytics 4
BigQuery simplifies and speeds up the execution of queries on large and complex datasets, eliminating the common sampling problem when creating complex segments in Google Analytics.
Until now, this feature was only available to GA360 users. But with Google Analytics 4, all users can benefit from exporting raw event data to run queries and export them to an external tool.
The New User Interface of Google Analytics 4
The user interface of Google Analytics 4 is the most evident change. The navigation structure has been simplified to focus on user paths and events, in line with the new data collection model. The visualization is improved and data tables have been updated.
It is now easier to get an overview of real-time data at a glance. You also have the ability to interact dynamically with the data and add comparisons. For example, you can compare data generated by desktop devices with those generated by mobile devices or all recent activities of users from a specific country.
Once you become familiar with the Google Analytics 4 data model, the new layout greatly simplifies viewing and predicting user behavior.
Is Google Analytics 4 Free?
The basic Google Analytics service is free, but its configuration requires “integration with BigQuery, which was previously only available to Google 360 Premium customers. The”BigQuery integration is included for free, but you’ll have to pay for any data usage beyond the free model limits, which are 10 GB of storage and 1 TB of query data processing per month. It’s important to make sure, therefore, to include data costs in migration calculations.
What the Transition to Google Analytics 4 Entails
The transition from Universal Analytics to Google Analytics 4 happens in just a few clicks, but its configuration is more complex because we’re not dealing with a simple update. Google Analytics 4, as we have extensively seen, has a completely new architecture.
To make the change, administrators and marketing teams will have to work with two different apps until Google Analytics 3 is definitively retired. This means that all operators will need to set up dual tracking with Universal Analytics and Google Analytics 4, running in parallel.
During the transition to Google Analytics 4, teams will need to determine which events are important, develop a strategy to host them, and then relabel everything on the site. Administrators will need to preserve historical data, as access to it will be truncated with Universal Analytics.
The truth is that multi-platform implementation for businesses and e-commerce activities will be quite complex and will likely take a lot of time. It’s therefore worth thinking long and hard about how and when to start this long and difficult transition and to consider, from now on, turning to industry professionals for guidance through this complex and delicate transition.
Automatic Tracking in Google Analytics 4
Google Analytics 4 has a list of what is tracked automatically, with an additional list of advanced measurement events that need to be configured manually in advance, but once enabled, behave like additional automatically acquired events. These include when users view ads, interact with embedded videos, or click on links that take them off the site or app.
It’s important to note that these events do NOT include clicks on specific site links or elements, such as clicking an add to cart button or a link to view a testimonial. Actions that are not captured do not generate data unless you manually configure an event. Although this is an improvement over asking a technician to modify the code for each event, you will have to wait several weeks to collect data once the configuration is done.
How Google Analytics 4 Handles Integrations
Integrations and customizations in Google Analytics are limited, time-consuming, and expensive to replicate. Users will still need to interact with middleware. In the case of Google Analytics 4, this is BigQuery, Google’s data warehouse platform.
Although a free connection to BigQuery is included, as mentioned before, you still have to pay for the data used. There are other, cheaper iOS middleware and tools like Appcues, and much larger and more expensive options in terms of time and money, like Marketo. The result is that with Google Analytics 4, integrations will always require middleware.
Choose Qreativa to Install Google Analytics 4 on Your Site or App
Whatever CMS you use (WordPress, Prestashop, Shopify…), “installing Google Analytics 4 is possible with the” help of Google Tag Manager. Our digital agency has been using this tool since its launch, because it offers many possibilities for analyzing user behavior.
Google Analytics 4 is already operational. The current version of Google Analytics Universal will be discontinued in July 2023 and all data will be lost! In reality, the history will still be available for a few weeks, but data will no longer be processed through Universal Analytics (UA). You will have to go through Google Analytics 4 to consult your statistics.
To have a timeline and the ability to compare data from year to year, we recommend migrating to Google Analytics today, many months before the official transition.
Our team of professionals can quickly set up Google Analytics 4 on your website or app.
Initially, we will maintain Universal Analytics in parallel, for a uniform implementation of Google Analytics 4. We will take all the time necessary together to explain to you step by step the changes this entails.
Contact us and let’s start right away without waiting for Universal Analytics to stop working!
