With major shifts in consumer data privacy and protection, Google recently introduced a new, more intelligent Google Analytics previously known as the App+Web property to help marketers leverage their data to get a holistic audience view.
What Does This Rollout Mean for Marketers Who Rely Heavily on Reporting and Analytics?
From a marketing perspective, Google Analytics 4 (GA4) will help businesses improve ROI through smarter insights from their marketing efforts in the long run, as there are several new features that have changed.
The most important feature of this update is that, unlike its predecessor which supports only websites, GA4 unifies the website and in-app analytics. This enables seamless reporting for advertisers as more and more companies rely on both in-app and web experiences to sell to their customers.
How Can I Take Advantage of the Power of GA4 to Deliver Key Insights?
GA4 shifts the focus toward events as opposed to page views, which is particularly important as the modern web design is built around simplicity and usability with less webpages. So, when a user interacts with a map or clicks on details of a product without changing pages, measurable events are triggered and GA4 focuses more on capturing that style of engagement as opposed to traditional page view engagement.
Until now, the Universal Analytics data collection model allowed you to build user segments and evaluate their performance. In GA4, things are different. You can be a lot more flexible with building audiences based on demographic information, statistics, etc. Audiences are a fundamental part of GA4 and thus Google encourages marketers and businesses to better understand how different audiences interact with their website and how to make their websites work best for them.
Will Google Analytics 4 Allow for More Accurate Audiences for Google Ads?
With machine learning at its core, GA4 will also be able to generate helpful insights and trends, while providing better understanding of customers across platforms and devices. The product allows for more flexible deployment of goals and conversions by handling them natively without having to code on the page or relying on Google Tag Manager.
GA4 brings less confusion in analytics for small businesses, particularly for those with simpler websites, while providing them with more value and an easier way of understanding their audience engagement. For larger businesses it’s all about unification of complex tasks leading to fewer analytics translations and increased overall efficiency.
The privacy-centric design also means GA4 does not store any personally identifiable information. In addition, it creates first party data which allows marketers to rely on analytics even with the recent industry restrictions on cookies and identifiers that expand missing data gaps.
How Should I Make the Switch?
While there are three main ways to transition to GA4, such as creating a new account, a second viewer property, or transitioning your existing account, we recommend using the same account and creating a second property that will run the new GA4 code. That way, it will be easier for you to migrate to the new analytics while maintaining your current data and keeping reports intact.
At Ntooitive Digital, we handle full transition services for our clients, including creation of the property, implementation, and translation of reports and goals into the new GA4 platform, so our clients can focus on running their business.
As the industry transitions to the cookie-less future, it is important to make the shift sooner than later to maintain all of your data, derive the most valuable insights, and keep your business up to speed.
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Article by Brian Johnson