Website analytics is the foundation of any organization’s digital marketing efforts. Over the last decade, Google Analytics, known as Universal Analytics (GA3/UA), has become the preferred analytics platform. It gives marketers access to performance metrics in real-time, without the need for costly data scientists and engineers.
Unfortunately, on July 1, 2023, GA3 users will either have to switch to GA4 or stop using Google Analytics altogether. If you haven’t started planning what you’re going to do, time is quickly running out.
To help you evaluate your options, we’ve compiled a list of the top 10 changes GA4 introduces.
- Change in the measurement model
The most significant change is how both versions tally visits and events on your website. GA3/UA prioritized session and page-based measurement, whereas GA4 measures events. GA4 fixes UA’s incomplete understanding of user behavior on modern websites, but it does so at the cost of making comparisons between GA3 and GA4 data impossible.
- No historical data
GA4 does not support historical data collected under GA3/UA and Google is killing access to that historical data within 6 months of July 1, 2023. The only way you’ll get access to historical data is if you export it to a data warehouse.
- New interface
The first thing you’ll notice about GA4 is the interface l and the way you interact with the data is completely different. Familiar menu items have been removed, new ones have been added, and the whole UX is cleaner and more streamlined. However, it’s a lot more challenging to master and a lot of things you used to be able to do in GA3 won’t be possible in GA4.
- Reporting and Explorations
One of the most critical features of a website analytics platform is its ability to report on the data it collects. In GA4, there are two totally separate reporting interfaces: reports and explorations. Reports provide standard views of aggregated data that are displayed in what Google calls cards, while the Explore tool presents all the unaggregated data that you’ll need to use to build custom reports.
- New dimensions and metrics
Dimensions and metrics have changed. GA4 kills things like bounce rate, metro, landing pages and enhanced e-commerce metrics and it adds a slew of new dimensions and metrics that make reporting across GA versions nearly impossible and will require adapting your KPIs to the new model.
- Active event tagging
GA4 improves event tracking with custom tags and parameters, giving you more control and flexibility over what you track. GA4 also includes some preset event/parameter tracking to help you get started. But with that added control and flexibility comes the need for data engineers to help you get the most out of GA4.
- Data sampling and data thresholds
Both GA3 and GA4 sample data, but GA4 introduces the concept of data thresholds which Google determines are necessary to ensure personally identifiable information can’t be reconstructed from narrowly scoped reports. Data thresholds will crop up as you try to analyze your reports, so be forewarned.
- BigQuery for historical data and customized reports
If you want to preserve historical data beyond 14 months or you want to customize your analysis, you’re going to need Google’s BigQuery engine. Good news is GA4 includes a free BigQuery connection. The bad news is that BQ requires some specialized knowledge from a data engineer or an agency.
- Tracking across mobile devices
GA4 introduces the ability to seamlessly track data across web and mobile devices, which will help marketers create a complete picture of their digital performance.
- Data retention
Lastly, GA4 will change how long the system will retain data. With GA3/UA, data could be retained anywhere from 14 months to forever. For any user-level reports created in the exploration tool, GA4 has a maximum of 14 months of data retention, and to get data beyond that limitation you must export outside of GA4 and store your historical data.
These are just a few of the changes coming with GA4. If you depend on Google Analytics to measure your marketing performance, prepare for a total change. If this seems daunting, fortunately there are other analytics solutions on the market
One affordable solution is Matomo, which provides a seamless way to connect historical GA3/UA web performance data to ongoing web analytics. To help with our clients transitioning to Matomo, the analytics team at MHP/Team SI has built its own robust value-added web analytics service running on our own Azure cloud platform that is a perfect fit for many businesses.
Web analytics is changing and now is the time to make decisions about the future of your company’s reporting and analytics. Don’t get left behind – reach out to the data analytics experts at MHP/Team SI today to learn more and navigate the changes.
