6 Min Read The era of Universal Analytics has paved the way for a new and advanced analytics platform from Google: GA4. As businesses strive to stay ahead in the digital realm, it is essential to understand the transition process and embrace GA4’s innovative features. In this blog, we will explore the benefits of upgrading to GA4, provide guidance on the transition process, and highlight the advantages it offers for data analysis and business growth.
Transitioning to GA4
As of July 1st, Universal Analytics stopped processing data, and any new properties created will be hosted on GA4 by default. The transition to GA4 represents a shift in the ever-changing digital landscape and analytics, particularly as multi-platform measurement has become a necessity in recent years with the constant evolution of technology.
If you didn’t make the transition to GA4 manually before July 1st, Google will have created a GA4 property on your behalf, and, wherever possible, reused the tags existing on your Universal Analytics property. However, you must ensure that different reports and metrics are set up correctly in the platform to ensure accuracy, as there may be tags missing, or maybe Google carried over tags or groups that you didn’t want to keep. Luckily, the Open Setup Assistant banner within your Analytics account will guide you through any additional features and settings you might want to set up.
Data for your previous years is still available in Universal Analytics, however, wherever year-on-year comparisons are required, we recommend collecting this information before access to Universal Analytics is revoked on July 1st, 2024 (but don’t panic – there’s still plenty of time!).
What features are there?
More advanced features have been introduced to GA4, allowing organisations to leverage better insights into the customer journey. The new service will help brands understand how their combined marketing efforts are making an impact, integrating websites and apps into a single journey view, much like the integration of organic and paid channels.
Firstly, the introduction of GA4 has seen the data become event-based rather than session-based, as it was in Universal Analytics. This update means organisations will have a more complete overview and understanding of the customer journey and be able to view every interaction with the website or app. This will help brands identify more opportunities for improvement and targeting, leverage the data, and optimise pages for customers. Additionally, the new service will measure specific interactions and occurrences on the device or platforms used, including any time a link is clicked and a purchase is complete. It can even measure changes in system behaviour, such as if an app were to crash, giving you real-time reports into the issue at hand so a solution can be found quickly, minimising the impact on the customer journey.
Reporting has been simplified and aligned with the customer journey so that organisations can find the data based on the part of the user experience that they are interested in and allowing for an improved focus on customer engagement:
- The home page will host instant insights into top-performing campaigns, the most viewed pages, and where new users come from, making key information easy to find.
- Reports that previously based on Audience, Acquisition, Behaviour, and Conversion have now been replaced by a Lifecycle section:
- Acquisition
- Engagement
- Monetisation
- Retention
- A User section will also be available, focusing on the demographics of your audience and the devices used to access your platforms.
The customisable reporting feature also enables organisations to tailor data and reports to specific requirements, such as certain audiences. The relevance provided by these custom reports will help organisations to explore the data in more detail, recognise insights that might not have been previously available, and identify actionable insights.
A final advancement to note is that GA4 is built for a cookieless future which will be instrumental in providing a flexible approach to analysis and improved targeting. Due to the changes in privacy regulations in recent years, it’s imperative that organisations keep up and mitigate risk to their customers’ data, and the privacy-centric approach means the platform will still be relied on, even with more changes in privacy that may come in the future. Although this approach means there will likely be gaps in the data that Google collects, the service will leverage machine learning and predictive modelling to fill in the gaps and support a complete understanding of customer behaviour across multiple platforms and devices.
Machine learning and automated insights
Machine learning has become an integral part of analytics and will provide smarter insights on the platform. These insights will be able to alert users to significant trends in their data, such as an increase in demand for particular products. But that’s not all….
Insights can be customised to identify changes and trends important to your organisation (with a maximum of 50 customised insights per property). These metrics could be based on potential revenue from a recently active user or a group of customers, which would allow you to create and target a new audience, or it could be based on purchase probability and analyse the likelihood that a user who has been active recently will log a specific conversion in the next week.
What benefits does GA4 offer?
With its new reporting capabilities, GA4 will bring a wealth of benefits to organisations. Brands will see a complete overview of how customers interact with a brand, from discovery to purchase. This improved understanding of the customer journey will help organisations quickly respond to changes, both within the industry and customer behaviour, and target the right people at the right time.
The predictive modelling feature will also support businesses in making educated decisions, with insight into purchase probability and potential new users to help them stay on top of things and implement targeted marketing in real time. With improved audiences and customer journey tracking, brands will be able to leverage this data and carry out actionable insights that are wanted.
- Enhance understanding of the customer journey
- Stay relevant
- Improve audiences
- Deliver the right messages at the right time
- Identify potential across campaigns and audiences
Eclipse is here to help
With more than 30 years of experience creating and executing effective marketing strategies, eclipse marketing is here to help you and your organisation make the most of your analytics and optimise your efforts. To find out how we can help you, get in touch today! Call us at 01244 347 545 or fill out our simple enquiry form, and we’ll be sure to be in touch.
