Starting July 1, 2023, Google will eliminate Universal Analytics (UA, the previous generation of Analytics) and replace it with GA4, which means that next year UA will be completely replaced by the new generation of GA4. This will be a huge change for marketers who are familiar with UA’s analytics features and interface.
In a survey conducted by Google in 2020, marketers said that it is difficult to understand customers comprehensively through the existing UA functions, and that data analysis provided by UA is difficult to help companies achieve their business goals, so it is an urgent issue to improve the metrics of analysis. In the past, UA focused on work sessions and the user’s browsing time on the web to get information; but now the new generation of GA4 will use users and events as analysis metrics, integrating the old version of work sessions, browsing, screen events, social interaction, transaction times and other aspects, combined with the definition of “events” to help marketers make better decision analysis and more efficient decision making.
Five Major Changes In GA4
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The old version only supports web data, but the new version has been upgraded to connect web and app data!
In the past, when the user’s behavior crossed different platforms, the data collected by the old UA version would be spread out and collected not entirely. Now GA4 can combine web and app data, so that enterprises can view the user’s continuous use processes (we call it the “life cycle”) across websites and applications, and fully understand the complete activity traces of customers, completely solving the problem that UA could not connect web and app data in the past.
GA4 can collect the user’s operating process and behavior across web and app platforms, and know whether they have cross-platform browsing records. By grasping the complete behavior and journey of users, it helps to understand the browsing habits and behavioral patterns of customers, which can be used as a benchmark to make accurate decisions and improve the overall strategic planning of enterprises.
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The event tracking function is increased to 4 levels!
The previous version of UA focused more on the work sessions, and the new version of GA4 focuses more on the user’s behavior (events)!
GA4’s event tracking is divided into four categories:
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Suggested events: Google will provide suggestions for tracking events according to your industry characteristics.
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Custom events: Users can customize events according to the needs of the website.
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Automatic collection of events: “page_view”, “first_visit”, etc. These events can be collected without relying on any code and will be updated automatically.
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Enhanced evaluation events: New events that were not available in the past will be collected, including page scrolling, site search, and video participation, among other things. (** GA4’s new [enhanced evaluation events] more detailed user’s browsing behavior, including page scrolling depth, file downloads, outbound clicks, site search, video interaction, etc. This information GA4 will automatically collect and pre-set to turn on but you can follow your own requirements to add specific events. If you do not need these functions at all, you can also freely choose to turn it off or on, but it should be noted that this feature is currently only supported by the web and not the app!)
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Using machine learning to predict the audience likely to buy or lose in the next 7 days!
GA4 can predict user behavior through machine learning; and uses the active users of the past month to predict which users are likely to complete a specific conversion in the coming week. The system will also help you identify potential lost audiences and provide suggestions on improving your marketing campaign strategy!
McDonald’s Hong Kong used predicted audiences - “likely seven-day buyers” - to increase orders and exported their predicted audiences directly to Google Ads for advertising, resulting in a more than six times increase in orders, 2.3 times increase in ROI, 5.6 times increase in revenue, and an even 63% reduction in cost per operation for the McDonald’s app.
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The report function is simplified to make it easy for users to understand.
GA4 has undergone a major restructuring of its report functionality, greatly simplifying the content and adding more visual presentations of data, making it easier for brands to understand. Additionally, the ability to explore reports has been added, allowing for a deeper understanding of users’ browsing history.
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Combine with Bigquery for long-term data storage and more accurate data analysis!
GA4 data can only be kept for a maximum of 14 months.If you want to keep it permanent, you have to combine it with BigQuery. You are no longer limited to store the number of data compared to UA. The combination of BigQuery not only allows you to see more accurate numbers, but also allows you to use the vast database to do more data analysis, and to keep the data for a longer period of time!
What Are The Difficulties In Connecting To GA4?
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For those who do not have a lot of experience in programming, it is not difficult to connect to basic settings (ex: number of visitors, exposure). But if you want to do further tracking of specific behaviors, it will be difficult to connect because you need to set and insert specific code to track specific events, so there is a certain technical barrier. Therefore, it is recommended to get the help of an engineer or ask an advertising agency with relevant experience to help with the connection.
Although UA is still running at this point.An early connection to GA4 will help the new system to start collecting data from e-commerce as soon as possible, which will help to improve the accuracy of the overall analysis results in the future. When UA is eliminated next year, you will not face the dilemma caused by the sudden change of data platforms! We suggest that companies use both UA and GA4 for data analysis; as the analysis function of GA4 is not fully mature at this stage. Marketers may be confused by the Ga4’s analysis interface and mode in the future.
You still have one year to prepare for the arrival of GA4. If you can effectively grasp this one-year transition period to build up e-commerce data and get used to this new data analysis model from UA, I believe that after UA is officially eliminated in July next year, the overall impact on merchants will be much smaller than if they were not prepared at all!
Reference:
https://propelyourcompany.com/google-analytics-4-guide/
https://searchengineland.com/what-digital-marketers-should-know-about-google-analytics-4-375863