If your website was built before October 14, 2020, you’re probably already running Universal Analytics (also known as Google Analytics). If your website was built after this time you may be running Google Analytics 4. If your website isn’t already running Google Analytics 4; now’s the time to make the move.
Why should you move to Google Analytics 4?
On 1 July 2023, Universal Analytics will stop processing hits on your website. Google recommends that you transition your website analytics to the new Google Analytics 4 (GA4) tool as soon as possible. While Universal Analytics data will be available for 6 months after it stops collecting information, Google is expected to update users in 2023 on when this information will no longer be available. That means the sooner you move your website to GA4, the sooner you start collecting data that you can use going forward.
How is Google Analytics 4 different from Universal Analytics?
The good news is that Google Analytics 4 comes with a great range of benefits that will help you get even more value from your website. Google Analytics was released in 2005 as a tool to monitor, measure and inform changes that you make to your website to improve website performance. The new GA4 tool offers many enhanced features that will make it even easier to drive improvements across your platforms.
Read on for some of the top highlights of GA4. If you want to fully explore the benefits; we recommend getting in touch. The team at caddie can help you transition your site to the new tool, understand the data you’re receiving, and use the information you’re getting to drive improvements to your performance online.
Google Analytics 4 tracks user interactions
GA4 is more holistic than its predecessor Universal Analytics because it collects both website and app data – allowing you to map your user’s journey across your website and branded platforms. This moves the focus of the data that’s collected to be much more about users and audience and less about sessions and pageviews.
Data gathered by GA4 across your platforms will allow you to uniquely understand how your customers are interacting with you online. You can then use this data to inform development of your online space to finetune your user experience and maximise opportunities.
Google Analytics 4 simplifies goal and event set up
Understanding what success looks like on your website is an important part of data gathering and that’s no different for Google Analytics 4. What is different is that GA4 makes it much easier, with automatic event tracking. Sign up to GA4 and it will pre-create actions and events for you automatically, requiring little or no editing or update. That means it’s now extremely straightforward to set goals and create events across your platforms and monitor them.
Better privacy options and tracking with Google Analytics 4
Your privacy obligations as a business owner may change but that doesn’t need to be a headache with Google Analytics 4. This tool aims to put privacy controls back in the hands of you and your users, giving better control over what personal data is collected.
The benefit to you is that you can rest assured your ads comply with the latest privacy regulations. In addition you don’t need to stress about missing information caused by individual privacy settings. GA4’s AI modelling can fill in the gaps in data so you can still get a good understanding of how your customers are interacting with you.
There’s more to see with Google Analytics 4
Google Analytics 4 has been developed to give you the information you need to develop a better online experience for your customers. Tracking across platforms gives you access to a wealth of information that’s user focused and accurate reporting provides real insights into how your customers are interacting with your business.
If you need help to add Google Analytics 4 to your business, or you would like help to understand the data it generates; call us. Our team is here to help you get the most of the investment you make in growing your business online. Let’s connect and master digital for your business, together.
