Migrating to Google Analytics 4 For Better Marketing Decisions

Google Analytics has been an important part of garnering information for digital marketers and businesses. However, Google is winding down the original version of analytics, Universal Analytics (UA) replacing it with its newer version of Google Analytics 4 (GA4). With the sun finally setting on UA in July 2023, it’s never been more important for businesses to take the leap and migrate to GA4.

What’s so great about Google Analytics anyway?

The point of setting up an online presence, be that or a blog or website, is to attract traffic. This can help to inform users about all your amazing services or products. Users will then, hopefully, convert into paying customers later on.

To effectively do this, you need to make smart decisions based on accurate research. Google Analytics will have allowed you to measure the metrics behind your marketing goals. It provides you with a wealth of other valuable data. 

Basing your decisions on this information can have a real impact on any strategies for your marketing and aid in making important decisions for the better. This is why you don’t want to be left in the lurch when UA is finally laid to rest.

What’s the Difference between Universal Analytics
and Google Analytics 4

GA4 uses a different data structure and data collection logic than UA. Instead of working around sessions, everything is built around users and events. This helps to track user journeys despite the increasing push for user privacy.

In a session-based model, any interactions are grouped within a specific time frame.

However, in an events-based model such as GA4, every user interaction is recorded as a standalone event, helping to build a single user journey for all data linked to the same identity. This helps to fill in any gaps in knowledge caused by user privacy settings.

The change in strategy means that the focus on each event provides lots of benefits to marketers such as analysis across platforms and better path analysis (sets of events performed by users on a site). As a result, GA4 is better able to analyse and predict user behaviours. 

It also has a simplified interface to make it easier to spot key trends and any irregularities in the data.

Moving to Google Analytics 4

As UA comes to an end it’s important to try and take vital information and data with you. By switching early you can preserve more data, making it possible to see more trends and gain better insights. Better insights allow for better marketing decisions. 

It's important to be able to compare data year-on-year, setting up GA4 before the end of June 2022 means you will have the all-important year's worth of data prior to the UA switch-off.

Yes getting to grips with new systems or services can always be a little time-consuming or confusing at first. However, we promise it will be worth it! By making this change you will be able to protect your data and enhance the knowledge you have of your business and users, allowing you to make the very best decisions going forward.

Not sure how to change to Google Analytics 4?

Don’t worry if you are feeling like all of this is a bit confusing. If you are feeling daunted at having to move your website over from UA then don’t panic. We are here to help. Our friendly team is more than happy to chat with you about changing to GA4 and we can even work with you to migrate your website to the new system.