Switch to Google Analytics 4 Early to Gain Advantage as a Marketer

Google Analytics is one of the most widely used web analytics tools for online marketers. The current free version of the tool will be terminated on July 1, 2023, affecting a large majority of users.

If you are a user of the 360 Analytics suite, you’ll be able to work with an extended schedule, and Google has recently made some changes to the timeline as well. Overall, you should have the Google Analytics 4 implementation project on your roadmap, if you are a user of the current version, also referred to as Universal Analytics.

There will be some fundamental changes, as Google Analytics 4 aims to be the next generation of analytics tools:

• The platform can collect data from both websites and mobile applications, providing a unified view of the customer journey
• Google Analytics 4 will define sessions differently compared to Universal Analytics, and will also put user-centric tracking in focus compared to sessions
• Two of the fundamental building blocks of Universal Analytics, page views and events are also redesigned, and all interactions will be collected as events in Google Analytics 4
• The usual event structure of Categories/Actions/Labels are removed, and custom parameters can be attached to any events collected, providing greater flexibility around capturing details that are important for you
• Data retention for granular data will be limited to 14 months, compared to an interval of up to 50 months, or even a non-expiring setting in Universal Analytics: That will put more emphasis on the usage of BigQuery for data storage, which actually becomes available for free-tier Analytics users

All the changes outlined above result in the fact that the new features of version 4 require users to transform their existing Universal Analytics setup, which cannot be automated. This is probably not new to most of our readers, but there might be some of you who are still pushing back on this task. We want to give you a few reasons why it is worth rolling up your sleeves and starting the implementation of Google Analytics 4 for your website now.

The earlier you start working on the transition process, the earlier you can:

• Validate your new setup, and make any necessary changes to ensure your Analytics setup is ready to be your web analytics tool beginning July 1, 2023
• Start actually working based on Google Analytics 4 reporting, and get familiar with new metrics, data definitions, visualizations, and Analytics web UI

Last but not least, an early start allows you to have time to turn this transformation into an advantage, and not just get away with the minimum required changes.

“History is always written by the winners”

With the sunset of Google Analytics’ current version, you’ll lose access to your historical data, expectedly after six months after the data collection has ended. You’ll probably want to work on exporting your data from Universal Analytics into an external data storage. This can range from saving some high-level reports to using ETL tools to gain access to some detailed data about your users and their behavior.

Unfortunately, Google Analytics 4 is not able to import your existing data. As a consequence, you need to build up the historical data for Google Analytics 4 as well, so you can analyze and visualize longer trends and year-over-year data. The earlier you start, the longer historical data you’ll be able to collect in Google Analytics 4, before your current data is gone.

To reach the full scale of your analytics you do not need to launch all your tagging setup at once. Start by creating your new Google Analytics 4 property, tracking the page views. Follow by adding further events, ecommerce data, and extend your setup with custom user properties and parameters. This will allow you to gradually progress, and gain the benefit of implemented parts as early as possible.

“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”

Without diving deeper into the technical details of differences between the two versions, we can say that the transitioning cannot take place automatically, and tracking needs to be designed and transformed into Google Analytics 4.

Even Google recommends that “it’s better to rethink your data collection in terms of the Google Analytics 4 model rather than port your existing event structure to Google Analytics 4.” This also means that the more complex your Universal Analytics settings are, the bigger your transformation project is likely to become.

You’ll need to think of transforming:

• Relatively common events like login/logout, file downloads into new event format and event parameters
• Custom dimensions into user properties and event parameters
• Custom IDs like Marketo tokens, non-PII user IDs
• Your consent management tools to work with Google Analytics 4

You should take advantage of this planning phase of the transformation, without just trying to mirror your existing setup into the definitions of the new version.

It’s a good opportunity to create or update your repository and definition of data collection: what interactions are being tracked, and what details are collected for each event.

Before starting to work on the new structure of event tracking, you can ask yourself and your organization a few questions:

• Do we really use all the events and details that are tracked in Google Analytics? Are some of them captured for historical reasons, but not actually used in any reporting or decision-making processes?
• Similarly, you might be able to identify a few user interactions, or details of tracking, that you have been missing. Does the transitioning project introduce an opportunity to close the gap? (This one is a double-edged sword, as it increases the scope and complexity of the transitioning project.)
• Are there any parts of our tracking that could benefit from redesign? Think of examples where you compiled more data into one tracking dimension. The data structure of Analytics 4 will allow you to have a more verbose data collection.

“An ounce of practice is worth more than tons of preaching.”

The transitioning process is not just about collecting data differently. Plan ahead for how you’ll start using your new dataset for reporting, analysis, retrieving insights, and making decisions. The reporting UI and several metrics definitions are also redesigned by Google, which you’ll need to learn and adopt.

Having meaningful data in your new Google Analytics 4 property will allow you to start using the reports built using this data set. You can compare your new and old stack of Analytics to ensure that any differences (which you can definitely expect just because of differences in data collection and definition) are within an acceptable range, and can be explained.

It’s very likely that you’ve not been using solely Google Analytics web UI for reporting, but Data Studio or other 3rd-party API integrations were also built on top of your collected data. You’ll need to review and update these, too. This will take time, and it’s better to have reliable data at your fingertips when starting to make the necessary changes.

“The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.”

We’ve tried to highlight all the reasons why an early start gives you a head start in the new GA era. Even if everything seems to be new in GA4, and the re-implementation project seems overwhelming, there are several reasons why you should start working on it now.

This article was not designed to be a detailed technical guideline or checklist, as there are several resources available from great players and rockstars of the analytics industry. Still, feel free to reach out to DemandLab to discuss your questions, concerns, and needs.