Introduction to Google Analytics 4: What is it and how it differs from Universal Analytics.
Getting started is always hard, but heading to an unknown and constantly testing is fun. So here we come, Google Analytics 4.
Even if you are a small business and you can’t afford to do costly studies, you do have the ability to run different kinds of tests in your app or on your website and see what works best. — Roger Doolye, author of Brainfluence: 100 Ways to Persuade and Convince Consumers with Nueromarketing.
So Google officially announced the new launch of Google Analytics 4 ( a.k.a GA4) in October 2020, and many articles have detailed how it differs from Universal Analytics ( GA3). You may ask why would I need to take time to read your blog. Well, quite frankly, you don’t have to. This is just a platform for my note and reinforces the memory of what I learnt from CXL, a brilliant marketing learning platform for any eager learner who wants to adopt the new trends of digital marketing.
The overview of the next generation of Google Analytics 4 ( GA4)
Google Analytics used to have two distinct, separate measurement platforms: Universal Analytics (known as GA3 for web purpose) and Google Firebase for mobile apps measurement. Each of these platforms has very distinct capabilities, user interfaces and data models. For example, in Google Firebase, you can export data using BigQuery that GA3 cannot do unless you paid for Google Analytics 360, which is also the paid version of GA for enterprise use. However, as the number of mobile users has dramatically increased, Google always encourages users to move over to the Google Firebase version. Moreover, suppose you are a user of GA 3 using it for reporting. In that case, you probably know some functionalities limation in terms of tracking, event-driven, exporting data to a CRM system, etc.…
Google up the game by having both measurement platforms merged so that users like me and you can enjoy the most up-to-date features, helping you understand customer behaviour in deep insights. Simply put, GA4 is the reunification of APP and Web with more complete functionalities on a single platform.
How it differs from Universal Analytics
Let’s get started with the availability of new advanced and developed feature that marketers have been asking and begging for:
- Automatic Measurement and New conversion tracking
Any GA3 user is probably aware that with Universal Analytics, when you installed the tracking code for the first time, you’ll only be given the data of page views by default. It is a minimal view, and Google knows that. So, Google launched a new concept called Automatic Measurement, that help marketer to have more insights without having to do more. It will automatically be enabled when implementing or upgrading GA4 for the first time, sort of like the GTM lite version of auto-tracking, whereby users can now track scroll, clicks, downloads, and much more.
By simply turning on the little toggle for any events they want to capture, these events can be stored without having to go out of the box. Another significant change here is that users can achieve more than 20 goals per view, freeing up the slots and is way more flexible. Also, of course, the new GA4 allows you to do debugging directly within the debug view to pinpoint whether the tracking is working expected or not.
2. Brand New User Interface with New identify Methods
From the static graph and table to a new concept of report cards, the UI has been completely reimagined with an interactive and fresher look. Not only Google introduced real-time interactivity, but it has built some improvements around default reporting identity. Why is it a big deal? Typically, you can only measure used by the default client ID or the first-party cookie. If you wanted to track users across different devices or browsers, there is going to be another anonymous user IDs that require marketers to do the cross-checking. Google identified the roadblock and revamped it with a flexible default method to prioritise user ID than client ID. Another considerable improvement worth mentioning is that Google is also integrating Google Signals for more identify features, which means data from cross identify graphic will be available across all reports.
3. New Audience Builder
This is the new segmentation and audience building capabilities in GA that you need to pay attention to. The new component has been available to allow a user to hit scoped segments ( a feature where Adobe used to brag), and now you can quickly identify the exact set of hits that met the advanced conditions. In addition, you will also be able to set up a temporarily vs permanent excludes, which is a crucial feature for remarketing tactic. Another significant improvement here is how GA4 is going to handle the concept of time. You can use the time as a component on the fly, especially in the case where you are going to track how long a user completed a checkout experience, time spends on reading a blog, or completed filling out a form, which is something you would never get a chance to do in GA.
4. New Funnel Reporting
GA has never done an excellent job at funnels, and the only way to create a really meaningful funnel was via upgrading to the enterprise version of GA. Now GA has taken the funnel capabilities that only exist in enterprise and given them away to every user in the standard version. Every user can create the funnel report on the fly. Google also introduced a new concept of trended funnels where user can create a funnel and then change the visualization then plot funnel steps on a graph, allowing the user to capture the data changes easily. That has not been mentioning about elapsed time, open vs closed funnel, and pathing rebuilt.
5. BigQuery integration
One last feature which all the marketers consider the biggest and most significant change to GA is the integration of BigQuery. So BigQuery integration opens up all of the advanced analytics use cases. For example, now everyone can do their machine learning or predictive analytics. Furthermore, it enables every non-technical or technical user to integrate and access the data within their other marketing platforms, which is very challenging to do with the standard version of GA.
So far, we’ve covered quite a lot of changes that happen within the new GA version. For my next article, I’ll cover the question like, “should I drop everything and move over from GA3 to GA4? and the step by step guide. I hope you enjoy the reading and don’t forget to keep exploring!
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