Google Analytics is changing. Be prepared and don't lose your data.
As GA4 experts, First&Third can help. Schedule a call to have us walk you through your site’s needs and how to adapt to this change.
GA4 is the 4th release of Google Analytics. it offers exciting new features, but puts existing data at risk.
Key Points
Google Universal Analytics will stop working on July 1st, 2023.
This means you’ll no longer receive data under GA3.
you’ll have a 6 month grace-period to access your GA3 data, separate from GA4
After this grace-period, you will lose access to all previous data.
you need to export your GA3 data and import it into GA4
By using Data Studio or Tableau we can help you export previously processed data in Universal analytics and then blend it with GA4 data so you can see the data all in one place.
why do you need to change? well, data in GA4 is collected differently than GA3 - these changes include (but are not limited to)...
Pageview tracking
Event tracking
eCommerce tracking
Inter-platform integration
Services
configuration & implementation
First&Third can configure GA4 and its custom events to be tailored to your business needs.
dashboards & reporting
The Google Analytics (GA4) Overview Dashboard gives a high-level overview with some of the most important metrics GA4 has to offer. This dashboard is created to minimize the time you waste going through all of the data that GA4 has to offer.
audit & optimization
Analytics need to be set up properly in order for you to make as much revenue as possible. Our analytics audit will ensure that you can track the exact data required to create significant and lasting strategies for your business.
as experts in GA4, we can fully migrate you the right way.
We’ll provide an analytics audit, analysis and reporting service. Your account will retain your data so you can continue comparing year over year trends.
migration is a lengthy process. but we’ll get you from Universal Analytics (GA3) to GA4 in no time with our phased approach:
Phase
1
Create a GA4 property that tracks pageviews and “standard” events.
Phase
2
Implement KPI related events (e.g. form fills)
Phase
3
Implement e-commerce events (optional)
Phase
4
Implement other custom track tracking (e.g. non-KPI events, custom dimensions, integrations)
Phase
5
full implementation audit once data is collected, make adjustments as required.
ready for First&Third to complete your GA4 migration?
key changes to be aware of before migrating
the biggest difference between Universal Analytics and GA4 is the measurement model that they use.
Universal Analytics uses a measurement model based on sessions and pageviews. A session is a group of user interactions (hits) with a website which take place over a given timeframe. A session can contain multiple pageviews, events and eCommerce transactions.
Google Analytics 4 uses a measurement model based on events and parameters. The principle here is that any interaction can be captured as an event. As a result, all Universal Analytics hit types translate to events in GA4.
in Universal Analytics there is a hit limit of 10 million hits per account on a monthly basis. GA4 has no hit/events limits.
BigQuery integration is another key feature of GA4 – BigQuery is a cloud data warehouse that lets you run highly performant queries of large datasets.
You can export all of your raw events from Google Analytics 4 properties to BigQuery, and then use an SQL-like syntax to query that data. In BigQuery, you can choose to export your data to external storage or import external data for the purposes of combining it with your Analytics data.
don’t be alarmed to discover the GA4 interface is totally different to the UA interface.
Google created GA4 to be much more customized than GA3. Due to this focus, GA4 doesn’t come with a standard report that loads at login. Instead, you will need to think through what information you would like to see and build a report to meet your needs.
faq's
Google’s three stated priorities for 2022 are Measurement, Privacy and Automation – GA4 is at the heart of all of those. In order for Google to achieve their goals, they needed to build a totally new version of Analytics from the ground up – this is GA4.
At first glance, the GA4 reporting view may look intimidating as many of these reports and metrics you are familiar with are not there. They have either been removed or replaced. You will see different sets of reports in your GA4 view, and you will not see many reports. This is because many reports are only generated when you start tracking events.
It depends on the complexity of what needs to be tracked. If everything that needs to be tracked is something that GA4 natively tracks, then anyone with access to Google Tag Manager (GTM) can install and set up GA4. If the actions to be tracked require custom coding, then someone with coding skills (like a developer) should set up GA4.
- If you are considering migrating from UA to GA4 yourself, here are some things to keep in mind:
- It’s not a simple swap for universal analytics (GA3) code for GA4 code. It will require understanding the new features in GA4 which includes new measurement models, configurations and reports to replicate your measurement implementations from Universal Analytics to GA4.
- If you have an app on iOS or Android and you are using Universal Analytics to gather usage data you will also need to update your app to use GA4.
Now! First&Third recommends migrating to GA4 ASAP so that you will be able to track year over year data for your web property once GA3 is no longer supported starting in July 2023. This will also give you as much time as possible to get familiar with GA4.
- It has cross-device tracking
- It has better integration with third-party tools and apps
- It has new engagement metrics that use machine learning
- It’s easy to troubleshoot your website/app in the improvements section
- It’s better at handling user privacy
GA4 is designed to natively track a number of on-site actions that required coding skills to track in GA3 (Universal Analytics) such as scrolling, downloads, and, eventually, video views. Yet, on-site conversion points such as contact forms, button clicks, purchases, etc., still require manual work for GA4 to track them. If these conversion points result in a new page being loaded (i.e, a ‘Thank You’ page), then the tracking set-up is very simple. However, if the conversion points don’t generate a natively trackable event, then the tracking set-up can be complicated, requiring custom coding.
- Installation with Google Tag Manager (GTM) only requires around 30 minutes (including quality assurance (QA) time).
- Conversion points that generate a natively trackable event also only require around 30 minutes to set up (including QA time).
- Conversion points and/or events that don’t generate a natively trackable event can require anywhere from 30 minutes to 4-5 hours to set up (including QA time).
