At the start of the year, Google announced that they will be updating Google Analytics (GA) from their current Universal Analytics (also known as GA3) to the new GA4 version.

Whilst this might sound like a run-of-the-mill update, it’s actually pretty big news in the online marketing world.

Why?

Well, Google Analytics plays a hugely important role in monitoring user behaviour on a website. Through the collection of in-depth data, GA allows website owners, businesses and marketers to get a clear and accurate insight into how people are interacting with their site.

In this week’s edition of Inside Track, I’ll explain exactly what Google Analytics is and provide some important information so you can make sure you’re up-to-date with Google’s big switch before time runs out.

Google Analytics explained

Before we delve into the new features and capabilities that GA4 promises to offer website owners, let’s first clarify what exactly Google Analytics does.

Google Analytics is a website analytics platform that helps website owners and marketers better understand their online audience and their behaviours on site.

Essentially, GA tracks and analyses a user's behaviour and interactions on a website. This includes data on what pages they visit, how long they stay, and what actions they take (I.e. clicking links, submitting forms or bouncing right off your page).

This information is vital for improving the performance of a website as it can reveal which pages are most popular, where users are dropping off, and what marketing efforts are driving the most traffic.

By using Google Analytics, website owners and marketers can make data-driven decisions about their website, which can ultimately lead to better engagement, more conversions, and increased revenue.

As you can imagine, this is an extremely valuable tool for online marketers such as ourselves as we make decisions based on data, not on guesswork.

At Inspire, we set up Google Analytics as standard for all our clients so that both we and they can keep track of what’s working, what’s converting, and what needs improving.

New features and benefits of GA4

So, what value does Google plan to bring with their new roll-out of GA4?

One of the main new features is the ability to combine both website and app usage into one succinct GA property (understand Google Properties).

This offers website owners a more robust method of tracking data and behaviours across devices and platforms.

Other new benefits that GA4 will provide are:

• Accurate reporting on unique users across platforms
• Advanced analysis reports
• No limit on the volume of data that can be sent
• Automatic tracking for certain events and actions (such as video tracking, exit tracking and site search tracking) - all available without any coding or tagging needed
• Robust cross-platform insights

Read more about switching to GA4 straight from the horse's mouth.

GOOGLES GA4 ADVICE

Inspire is already on the case

The important takeaway here is that GA4 will become the universally used version for all Google properties as of July 1, 2023.

On this date, the free version of Google Universal Analytics will no longer collect data. Users who fail to update their property to GA4 before this cut-off could face losing all their existing website data.

Whilst it’s not strictly necessary to move to GA4 before July 1st, it is strongly recommended. This is because Google properties won’t be importing historical data from GA3, which means that your GA4 property will only start collecting data and tracking traffic from the moment you create it. Therefore, the sooner you create GA4, the more data you’ll have to analyse

Fear not, however, as Inspire is on the case.

My team and I have already started setting up GA4 accounts for all our existing clients to ensure a smooth and seamless transition before the deadline comes around.

If you’re not an existing client of ours and would like more information on how to set up GA4 for your website, please don’t hesitate to reach out to myself. I’ll be more than happy to walk you through the process or better yet, do the dirty work for you.

SPEAK TO DAVID ABOUT GA4

Connect with me on Linkedin

If you have any questions, fancy a chat or are looking for an introduction to someone, message me on Linkedin.

CONNECT ON LINKEDIN

f you want any specific advice about anything digital, I'm here to help. Give me a call on 01738 700 006 or drop me a line and I’ll get right back to you.