Google Analytics
The Next Big Thing in Google Analytics 4
Introduction
In late 2020, Google upgraded from Universal Analytics to Google Analytics 4. The upgrade is different from the old version. It includes expanded predictive insights, deeper integration with Google Ads, cross-device management capabilities, and more granular data and controls.
What’s new?
The new Google Analytics 4 property offers a complete cross-channel view of your customer lifecycle using predictive marketing features. This provides marketers with information and efficient methods to act on those insights.
Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is the default option once you establish a new property. The preceding iteration called Universal Analytics is still available, although Google advises site owners to set up Google Analytics 4 and Universal Analytics and run them parallelly.
5 unmissed new insights
1. Google Analytics 4 automatically alerts you about significant trends in your data. Through applying Google’s advanced machine learning models, the new Google Analytics 4 can automatically alert you to important trends in your data.
Data trends can be in the form of your products seeing increasing demand because of new customer needs.
Google Analytics 4 helps you anticipate future actions that your clients may take. For instance, it calculates churn probability to let you efficiently invest more in retaining customers whenever your marketing budgets are under strain.
Google is continuously unlocking insights as we reopen to its Google Analytics 4. Google is adding new predictive metrics such as the possible revenue you could earn from a particular group of customers. This lets you create audiences to help you reach higher-value customers and run analyses to ascertain better why some clients are likely to spend more on your products and services than others.
Doing so helps you take action to improve your results.
2. You can easily use what you learn to improve the ROI of your marketing using Google Analytics 4. With the new integrations across Google's marketing products, it's easy for you to utilize what you learn to improve your marketing ROI.
Deeper integration with Google Ads, for instance, allows you to create audiences that can reach your customers with more relevant, helpful experiences wherever they opt to engage with your business. This makes a more significant impact on attraction websites and tourism destinations.
3. With Google Analytics 4, you can get better ROI from your marketing for the long term. The new and intelligent Google Analytics builds on the App + Web property foundation, which was introduced in beta in 2019.
The new Google Analytics 4 has machine learning at its core to automatically show helpful insights and provide you with a complete understanding of your customers across platforms and devices.
The new Google Analytics is privacy-centric by design to let you depend on it although industry adjustments like restrictions on cookies and identifiers form gaps in your data.
4. Get a more detailed understanding of how customers interact with your business. Google Analytics 4 gives you customer-oriented measurement instead of device or platform fragmented measurement.
It utilizes various identity spaces, including marketer-provided User IDs and unique Google signals from users who opted into ad personalization, to give you a more detailed view of how your customers interact with your business.
For instance, you can see if clients first discover your business from a web ad before installing your app and making purchases there.
You will also get a broader understanding of your customers across their whole lifecycle, starting from acquisition to conversion and retention. This is vital when people's needs are changing rapidly, and you must make real-time decisions to win and maintain your new customers.
As online marketers, we can now intuitively find marketing insights based on the part of your customer journey they want to know about.
For instance, you can see the channels driving new customers in the user acquisition report, then utilize the engagement and retention reports to understand the actions taken by these customers and whether they remain engaged after converting.
5. Experience a new approach to data controls. Invest in your digital marketing basics such as smarter analytics. This will help you respond to rising consumer expectations, regulatory developments, and changing technology standards for user privacy.
Using Google Analytics 4 gives you a new approach to data controls to efficiently manage how you collect, retain, and utilize your Analytics data. More granular controls for ads personalization enable you to choose when to limit your data use to measurement.
Note that we are still offering users control over sharing their activity with Google Analytics. The new Analytics adapts to a changing technological future with or without cookies or identifiers.
What you need to do to upgrade
Don't ditch Universal Analytics yet. You can have Google Analytics 4 and Universal Analytics on your website simultaneously, although they shouldn't interfere with each other.
There are various ways of getting started with Google Analytics 4. One option is to create a new property, GA4. The other option is to utilize the Upgrade Wizard.
You can switch from Universal Analytics to Google Analytics 4 in your GA admin area. Once you create a new property from scratch, GA4 is a default option.
In the Account column, ensure that your preferred account is selected.
In the property column, select the Universal Analytics property, which currently collects data for your website.
In the property column, click GA4 Setup Assistant.
Click Get Started under the “I want to create a new Google Analytics 4 property.
If your website utilizes the gtag.js tag, you can Enable data collection using your existing tags. However, when using a website builder/CMS like Wix, Google Tag Manager, or your website is tagged with analytics.js, the wizard cannot reuse your existing tagging, and you'll need to add the tag yourself.
Click on Create Property.
Conclusion
In conclusion, we can’t emphasize enough the importance of setting up a new GA4 property as soon as you can. It will help you explore the advantages, avoid the pitfalls, and get familiar with the latest measurement model, to let you depend on GA4 with confidence.