In October 2020, Google announced the introduction of Google Analytics 4(GA4). In order to provide you with a more customizable analytics platform that combines website and app data and gives you more control over the data you see, Google has decided to move in that direction. It allows you to focus more on data that matters to your business.
There are several new things and terms in GA4, like different types of reporting. GA4 is focused on two main things, which are machine learning and data visualization. In GA4, you will find more insights, predictive analytics, and graphs and charts.
In this complete guide, we’ll learn everything you need to know to start with Google Analytics. This post includes:
- What is Google Analytics 4
- Latest changes
- Benefits of GA4
- How to set up GA4
Let’s begin
What is Google Analytics 4?
GA4 is a free service that allows you to track any engagement and traffic that happens across your website and apps. It is the new property available on Google Analytics and will replace the former type of Universal Analytics (UA). GA4 is the most advanced property which allows privacy-first tracking, AI-driven predictive analytics and cross-channel data measurement.
Now you know the basic definition of GA4, let’s move to the next part of this guide which is the changes in GA4.
What Are The New Changes? – Google Analytics 4 VS Universal Analytics
Moving to a brand new platform can be difficult, and if you have been using Universal Analytics for years, it becomes more problematic. Now suddenly, you have to make the change to this new way of collecting data.
Looking for the challenges and changes that users have faced when moving to GA4 from UA, we’ve listed some issues we found:
- Understanding events in GA4
- Difficulties tracking conversion data
- Trouble finding assisted conversions and bounce rate
- Understanding which metrics to use
These are the few changes we noticed, but hopefully, they make it feel less alone if you’re dealing with GA4.
Advantages of Google Analytics 4
GA4 has been created to deal with both website and mobile application tracking. To handle privacy concerns, Google Analytics 4 differs from Universal Analytics GA3 in several ways. GA4 has been created to comply with General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and address issues that the Universal Analytics GA3 could not address.
Here we mentioned some perks of using GA4. Let’s what those are:
- Focuses on user journey– The new data-driven model in Google Analytics 4 focuses on a user’s journey and the events that occur throughout it. You can examine web and mobile data with a single set of metrics and dimensions. GA4 introduces a new feature that tracks users who visit on their mobile, return on their desktop, and subsequently download, buy, or register on their app.
- Simplified goals and events setup- GA4 provides you with pre-configured activities and events that you can utilize rather than manually setting up on UA. These include clicks, scroll behavior, file downloads, and first-user visits. Although form submissions and e-commerce objectives cannot be automatically set up, the process has been simplified, requiring less time to set up than previous versions of Google Analytics.
- Improved use engagement analysis– The outstanding feature of GA4 is its robust new user metrics and dimensions. GA4 provides us with new user buckets like ‘acquisition,’ ‘engagement ‘and ‘retention’ and also provides you with a separate audiences report.
- AI insights for predictive metrics – With the new metrics in GA4, you can make data-driven decisions on a larger scale, allowing you to understand your audience better. You can target a Google Ads campaign or social media with these new metrics, which will enable you to build audiences based on predictive behaviors.
Many of the elements, or you can say merits, will help us collect data in a cookie-less future.
A Brief Overview of What to Expect from GA4
Users and sessions have switched positions in Google Analytics for the past few years. The subtle change was a nod to the future, urging marketers to focus on the user rather than session-by-session information in the future. And Bharat Arpanet will help your company or business while moving to the next level GA4 analysis.
GA4 delivers this shift in addition to event-based tracking. It allows much flexibility and detail due to event-based tracking rather than hit-based tracking. Categorizations like label, action and category have been deprecated, and all website interactions are recorded at the same degree of granularity. Because all data points are translated into human activities, the question becomes less about what happened in a specific session and more about the person’s behavior and data points.
