What Is GA4 and Do I Really Need It?
For a long time many have relied on Google Universal Analytics to give us access to a huge amount of invaluable data about our websites.
If you’ve been a Universal Analytics (UA) user for a while, you might have been receiving comms from Google about Google Analytics 4, or GA4 for those up with the lingo.
Initially you were invited to opt-in from UA to GA4 but Google recently announced that UA is “going away”. This means it’s no longer a question of “should I switch to GA4?” and more a question of “when am I switching to GA4?”. And the answer to that is, the sooner the better as UA is no more as of June 2023.
It’s worth noting that if you created your property on Google Analytics after October 14, 2020, you’re likely already using GA4 anyway and no action is required. However, if your property was created prior and you haven’t accepted the invitation to migrate to GA4 yet, it’s probably time to take action (we can help with this).
We’ve heard a bit of grumbling and push back about the change, but everything will be fine. In fact, while our beloved UA has long been a powerhouse of data for website owners, GA4 is set to open up a whole new world of information.
Reasons to switch to GA4.
To get you excited about what’s to come, here are a few of the key changes that will have plenty to offer:
More in-depth data
For those currently using UA, each user is tracked via a session. A session encompasses everything a user does on your site during a set period.
While session-level data will still be available, when you make the move to GA4 everything will be tracked as an event. This means you will have an increased level of insight into how users are interacting with your site and its content, not just in one session but across return visits.
The data will also focus more on engagement, with new metrics including engaged sessions and engagement time. Ultimately, GA4 will allow you to gain a far greater understanding of your customer’s journey.
Predictive metrics
Rather than only looking back, GA4 looks forward to predict what specific users might do next.
You can even create audiences based on metrics like purchase probability and revenue prediction — perfect to retarget with a relevant ad campaign via Google or social media.
Greater customisation
Forget about superfluous data that gets in the way. With GA4 you are encouraged to create custom reports that are focused on the data you really need.
You can create a dashboard that keeps your most important figures front of mind, plus GA4 integrates well with Google Data Studio for visualisations of your data too.
Multi-channel analytics
With GA4 you can create Information Streams within each property. These streams might be an app or a website.
From here, GA4 combines data from each stream to give you a clearer picture of user behaviour and the customer’s journey to conversion with your business.
Do your app users end up driven to your website or vice versa? GA4’s sophisticated approach to analytics is determined to help you find out easily.
The absolute importance of data.
When making any investment into your business or brand, you want to keep track of how it’s going. Has it been worthwhile? Is it doing what I want it to do?
If you have invested time, energy and money into a website and digital strategy, you want to know if it is achieving what you want it to achieve. GA4 is the latest way to do this and offers even more data and customisation, so you really can’t go wrong.
If the time has come to get more data on what you’re doing, upgrade to GA4, or experiment with Google Ads, let’s have a chat.