For more than a decade, digital marketers and website managers have leaned on Google’s Universal Analytics (UA) product to evaluate web performance, analyze user behavior, segment audiences and track conversions.
In 2020, Google announced the release of an all-new, events-focused analytics system to replace UA called Google Analytics 4 (GA4), and, on July 1, 2023, GA4 officially replaced UA. By July 2024, users will lose access to their historic UA data.
The Digital Communications team spent much of the last year switching all active, DigiComm-hosted websites to GA4 ahead of the July 2023 UA shutdown.
What is GA4?
GA4 is the most-recent version of Google Analytics and builds upon the foundation of Universal Analytics.
The data gathered by GA4 can be broken down into two types:
- Metrics or Quantitative: Measure data. For example: counts, ratios, percentages
- Dimensions or Qualitative: Describe data, split data into categories.
New Elements
- Event: Any interaction on the site such as clicks, scrolls, product views, page views, e-commerce transactions, exceptions. Event components: event name, parameter, value
- Session: A visit to the site (or app) within a given time frame
- Segment: Breaks up into categories or dimensions (location, device category, traffic source and more)
- Conversion: Measures if your business objectives are being reached. It’s when a user completes an action or goal on your website
- Source: Where the user traffic originated from
- Medium: The avenue the traffic took to get from the source to your site
Highlights:
- GA4 is now event driven, which means that data mode and tracking is event based instead of session based. Every time a page gets viewed a page_view event gets fired
- It has automatic tracking with enhanced measurement
- Cross-device tracking
- Sessions more robust
- Improved funnels and pathing
- Time-based analysis
- Additional and more flexible conversion goals.
- Export data to the cloud through Big Query.
- Collects both website and app data to better understand the customer journey.