Time to prepare for GA4
Google Analytics is a powerful tool; many of us in the industry could not operate without it. In March, Google announced that on July 1st, 2023 Universal Analytics (UA) will no longer process new data. It’s time for everyone to prepare!
What does this mean for Universal Analytics?
The new analytics tool is called Google Analytics 4 (GA4), and it will soon be the norm for data collection. Luckily, there is almost an entire year to prepare for this change.
You will still be able to collect data on UA for a while; however we recommend that you transition out of UA by January 1st 2023. That way, when UA fully shuts down, you will already have data to work with from the last 6 months on GA4.
In fact, it may even be best to switch to GA4 now and begin to familiarize yourself with the tool and its capabilities.
Why is Google Analytics changing?
UA tracked cookies (now 20 year-old tech) which can easily be blocked by ad blockers. Cookies have also been harder to work with due to regulations, and may be unreliable and inaccurate.
Google has 3 stated priorities for 2022: Measurement, Privacy, and Automation. To fully achieve these goals, Google needed to build a new version of analytics from the ground up.
GA4 was also built with AI in mind to better predict conversions, including when visitors are most likely to convert or complete certain goals.
GA4 vs. UA
UA was built with an emphasis on total site visitors, pages views, and sessions. GA4 has more of an emphasis on active users, events, and parameters. Depending on how active your community is, you may not see that big of a difference in data.
One thing to note is that UA supports five goal types- destination, duration, pages/session, smart goals, and event goals. GA4 will only support Conversion Events so it may not be completely possible to replicate all of your goals from UA to GA4.
Additionally UA counts only one conversion per session, and GA4 will count multiple conversions per session. This could either be a good thing or a bad thing for all of your conversion goals.
What Makes GA4 Better?
Google Analytics can track data from both websites and mobile apps.In fact GA4 can track a single user’s experience on a browser and on a mobile device.
GA4 will pose new challenges for marketers, especially those who want to know very hyper specific data. Marketers all over the world are going to need to learn a new tool and adjust to it.
There have been some complaints that GA4 is harder to use, and many people are reluctant about the switch. However, that is to be expected when a new data tool comes out. Once people get familiar with the tool opinions will change.
Ultimately GA4 is better, and it’s the future; with increased privacy and regulations in mind, this product is likely a significant improvement for everyone as consumers.