Google Analytics 4 (GA4) will be fully replacing Universal Analytics by the middle of summer 2023.. This may pose a challenge for many companies because they rely on GA for data, traffic attribution, audience insights, and more. So many businesses are wondering: how is this upgrade going to affect your data? And what steps can they take to prepare for the switch?
How to Prepare Your Digital Marketing in Denver for GA4
Don’t worry, FiG is here to explain it all for your business.
What is the Difference Between GA4 vs Universal Analytics?
Generally speaking, GA4 and UA are essentially the same system. Both property versions will track website visitors and provide helpful data for your business. However, here’s what really separates GA4 from Universal Analytics:
- How users are tracked: In UA, users are tracked via sessions (set periods that encompass everything they do on your site). GA4 is event-based, which means it tracks users by all the events they complete across all sessions.
- Reporting: GA4 allows for greater freedom in how your reports look and allows you to drill down into the data that’s most important for you.
- How the properties are set-up: UA uses a “property” and “view” setup, while GA4 allows you to mix data from your apps and websites.
If you are frequently relying on Google Analytics for data, it is important to ensure this new type of GA is going to function properly on your site. You have over a year to implement GA4 on your site, but the sooner you can get started, the better! Test your site with both versions of Google Analytics in order to make sure that all features work properly.
Digital Marketing Benefits of GA4:
GA4 offers tons of unique benefits for your data analysis. Here are just a few examples:
- Gain insights across touchpoints: Understand the entire customer journey from start to finish.
- Attribution-based marketing: Assign credit for conversions to more than just the last click.
- More valuable data: By using machine learning, GA4 can help predict user behavior, create new audiences of potential customers, and automatically surface important insights.
- More actionable data: GA4 allows for expanded integration with Google Ads. This allows you to combine Google Analytics' web and mobile data into a single view, so you can quickly see which pages drive traffic to your site from Ads.
- Built for enterprise businesses: With new sub and roll-up property structures in Analytics 360, organizations can customize the structure of their GA4 properties to fit their business needs.
Starting on July 1, 2023, standard Universal Analytics properties will stop processing data. After that date, you'll be able to view your historical Universal Analytics data for only a short period of time.
If you don't think Universal Analytics is "obsolete" now, then you will soon. Google is already on top of it with a whole new version. GA4 won’t make all your problems go away, but we do believe that GA4 is going to help a lot in the future.
How Will This Affect Your Digital Marketing in Denver?
GA4 is designed for a variety of business purposes, including driving sales, generating leads, and engaging customers online and offline. GA4 can work across multiple platforms and offers more privacy because it will no longer store IP addresses. And this upgraded system offers enhanced, seamless integrations with Google's ad platforms to optimize campaign performance.
At the end of the day, the main impact of the GA4 shift boils down to one thing: Data. The expanded data capabilities and reporting will provide greater insights into your marketing operations. Greater data representation essentially means better marketing for your brand.
Just make sure you get your GA4 property set up before the switch in 2023.
If you need clarification on the new GA4 update or want to learn how you can best leverage it for your business, contact the experts at Real FiG Advertising + Marketing to get the facts on GA4.