Table of contentsExpand
Switching from Universal Google Analytics to Google Analytics 4 may seem daunting. I had mixed feelings myself when I saw the new dashboard. I started looking for arguments for and against it, because Google Analytics 4 is still in beta and does not have all the features/reports that Universal Analytics had.
The argument that ultimately convinced me to switch and implement GA4 for my clients was data collection. This can be done by collecting this data in parallel in two services: Universal Analytics and GA4. When GA4 comes out of its “infancy,” the data I will have at my disposal will allow me to make decisions regarding the strategy for the activities being carried out.
Is there anything else that encourages installing GA4? Of course—this is a completely new tool in which the data collection model has been completely rebuilt.
The new data model in GA4
Universal Analytics (GA3) uses a model based on sessions and pageviews, while GA4 uses a model based on events and parameters (in GA4, even a pageview is treated as an event).
Automatic event tracking
GA4 has a built-in enhanced measurement feature that enables automatic tracking of specific types of events such as scrolling, clicks, video plays, outbound click tracking, and site search tracking.
Retention of user and event data.
For data associated with cookies and user identifiers in GA3, we had 5 options to choose from: 14, 26, 38, and 50 months, or the option for it not to expire automatically. In GA4, we have 2 options: 2 months or 14 months. This is more of a difference than an advantage.
Tracking across different devices, i.e. cross-domain tracking.
It will be possible to track users across different devices (finally!). This is one of the biggest and most important changes in Google Analytics 4. Finally, thanks to the ability to measure a user’s behavior across different cross-device devices, we will be able to understand their interactions with the company. Reports in GA4 have been arranged from user acquisition through engagement, purchases, and retention, meaning loyalty to the company. At last, solutions have appeared that Googlers used to envy Facebook Analytics users for.
User data will come from 3 sources! User ID, Google Signals, and the least important one: cookies. Based on these three sources of information, the system will build a user profile using machine learning.
Debugging
I love this feature; thanks to it, you can verify the correctness of the changes you make on an ongoing basis. This was very much missing in GA3. Admittedly, when implementing tags via GTM, you could enable preview mode, but there we only had information on whether the tag had fired, and in the data layer we had to check the parameters that had been sent to GA. In GA4, directly in the tool’s interface, we can analyze all events virtually in real time.
BigQuery!
GA4 provides a free connection to BigQuery, meaning you get access to the source data from GA4 and can run SQL queries on it. In the case of GA3, only GA 360 users had such capabilities, and as you know, access to GA 360 cost a fortune!
Advanced analytics reports (Template Gallery):
- exploration reports
- path analysis reports
- path sequence analysis report
- segment overlap reports
- user behavior exploration reports
- cohort analysis report
- lifetime value report
That is why I encourage you to launch the Google Analytics 4 service today. Below you will find a video showing how to do it step by step. However, if you are using Google Universal Analytics, next to it you will find a video on how to update GA3 to GA4.
