Get Ready for the GA4 Transition

Get Ready for the GA4 Transition
As many of you already know, Google’s Universal Analytics (UA) will sunset on July 1, 2023, and they recommend we prepare to use Google Analytics 4 (GA4). But how many of you actually are ready for the GA4 transition? If making the switch to GA4 is not high on your community’s priority list right now, you might want to reconsider after reading this article. 

What is GA4 and How is it different from UA? 
GA4 is a new Google Analytics platform that allows you to measure traffic and engagement across your websites and apps. It is becoming the default of Google Analytics and the most significant difference between GA4 and UA is the data model they use. While UA uses a data model based on sessions and pageviews, GA4 is an event-based platform, meaning any interaction can be captured as an event.

The bottom line is that there’s a limit to how many metrics we can compare and we should expect to see differences as GA4 is a completely different analytics platform with a different data model from UA. It is essential to be aware of how these differences impact your data and the decisions you make with it for your community. 

3 Reasons to Get Ready for the GA4 Transition:

1. Robust Cross-platform & Cross-device Tracking/Improved User Journey Tracking
With GA4, you can combine website and mobile app usage data into one GA property by using data streams, which makes it easier to track conversions and measure user journeys across all platforms. There is a new section called “Life Cycle” which helps you break down user activity at each stage in the customer user journey, from acquisition to retention.

2. Cookieless Insights/More Privacy & Security Enhancements
Privacy and security concerns are the biggest reasons behind the web moving ever closer to a cookie-less world. It’s becoming a lot more difficult to track users using your website (and as they travel across multiple platforms) with cookies as the introduction of General Data Protection Regulation laws and privacy enhancements are being implemented nowadays. GA4 provides a more privacy-focused approach to tracking users across websites and apps, relying less on first-party cookies by using AI and machine learning.

3. More Chance to Improve ROI
The advanced tracking across devices and platforms as mentioned above can give you much more reliable data. With GA4, you configure your web and apps correctly, you can stitch user journeys together which will help you to make better marketing decisions and avoid wasting ad spend.

Get Familiar with GA4 Sooner than Later
As businesses need ample time to collect historical data before making the switch, we say now is the time for you to get familiar with the GA4 platform! We recommend using UA and GA4 in parallel to generate data as much as you can and export your existing data so that you can compare it later since you won’t be able to view historical reports of previously processed data in UA eventually.

If you are already an Optimized Website customer, rest assured we will be making these changes to sites before July 2023. If you are not an Optimized customer and have any questions about setting up GA4 for your community’s website, feel free to get in touch with our marketing team today. 

Happy Marketing!

The Resite Team