GA4 is an upgrade of Google Universal Analytics (UA), which has been in the business since forever, helping online businesses track and flourish. GA4 is here with revolutionized event tracking, app data unification, and streamlined custom reporting. If you are a Google Analytics user, you would have received a warning that UA ends data collection on July 1, 2023, and that you are required to migrate your eCommerce website across to Google Analytics 4. But waiting until the last day risks losing significant historical comparisons.
The first question to ask is “Should I drop UA (GA3) and move to GA4 right away?” The short answer is No. The smart move here would be setting up GA4 and using it alongside Universal Analytics. It’ll help you get the hang of the new interface of GA4 while getting as much data as possible. This way, you can be best prepared for the switch when you are compelled to. In addition, the shift to GA4 poses some new opportunities and challenges for eCommerce. Before we move to ‘what’s new in GA4’, let’s understand it a bit better. Learn about Most Frequently Asked Questions About Google Analytics 4
Google Analytics is the top player when it comes to tracking website visitors. The platform’s value is reflected in its popularity, which is why it’s the market leader boasting an 86% share. GA4 is a new property that helps analyze the performance of your website and app traffic and will replace Universal Google Analytics from 2023. It was first released in October 2020, although it’s only now that the campaign to migrate across has started in earnest. From July 1, 2023, standard Universal Analytics properties (the previous version of Google analytics) will no longer process data. As a result, you’ll be able to see your Universal Analytics reports for only a brief period after July 1, 2023. This means having a continuous history of activity; you’ll have to move to the new GA4 platform sooner rather than later.
The primary reason Google created GA4 separately from Universal Analytics is to launch a beta version that it could upgrade. Universal Analytics was first launched in 2005, and it goes by saying that it has changed the way we buy and the way we market since then. The world is moving towards a cookieless culture, which is another reason to have an analytics platform promoting privacy. It is also said that GA4 is built and will focus on first-party, zero-party data. So, it’s no surprise that Google felt they needed to start from scratch to ensure they were covering all bases.
Reporting interface
At first glance, Universal Analytics and Google Analytics 4 seem very different as the reporting interfaces are very different. This is because many of the reports and metrics you’re familiar with have either been removed or replaced. Along with some of the systematic changes coming in GA4, several out-of-the-box views will be either discontinued or introduced, including but not limited to, Acquisition at a user level, Behavior-based reporting (e.g. Frequency, Recency), and Benchmarking.
When first logging into GA4, you may also notice considerably fewer reports than Universal Analytics. GA4 reports are mostly generated once you start tracking events that require some manual setup.
Reporting views
In Universal Analytics, you can have up to 25 reporting views to give you control of your data. For Google Analytics 4, there is only one reporting view available. You can create new ‘Audiences’ and ‘Data streams’ and use these in place of filtered views.
Measurement model
Universal Analytics is session-based, while GA4 is event–based. In other words, the ability to track events like button clicks, video plays, and more is built in with GA4, while this requires advanced setups in UA. This comes from the premise that page views aren’t the sole important metric. This transition provides many new opportunities for setting up rich, customized event and metric tracking that is tailored to your business needs. GA3 (Universal Analytics) uses measurement based on sessions and pageviews whereas GA4 uses a measurement model based on events and parameters. What’s important is that every activity taken by a user will be counted as an ‘event’ in GA4. It means that you’ll end up with much more detail on how users are engaging with your website.
Cross-device tracking
UA was built around desktop web traffic, while GA4 gives businesses visibility into the customer journeys across all of their website and apps.
Machine learning
GA4 uses machine learning technology to share insights and make predictions.
Privacy-friendly
UA data relies heavily on cookies, GA 4 does not.
User access management
In GA4, admins have the ability to selectively grant access to various portions of the property’s sales and cost data, providing even greater customization for team or individual access and allowing for more secure onboarding of 3rd parties.
Analytics dashboards in Data Studio
Customized dashboarding is no longer a feature in GA4. This function is now served by Google Data Studio, one of the many Google products being more deeply integrated with the Google Analytics Environment. Data Studio provides a new set of possibilities for answering your visualization needs.
Expansion of insights feature
In Universal Analytics, the Insights feature was locked to only give system-provided callouts, but in GA4, users are able to set up their own custom insights in addition to those served by the system.
Sessions
In Universal Analytics, a session is a combination of page views, events, transactions or more taken by one user within a given timeframe. You can think of a session as a container for all the actions a user takes while on your site.
In contrast, Google Analytics 4 sessions aren’t limited by time. Since it doesn’t create new sessions for source changes mid-session, your session count will likely be lower.
Given this change, your average session time will drastically change too. And remember, average pages per session is no longer measured in GA4.
Bounce rate and engagement rate
One big change is that Google Analytics 4 doesn’t measure bounce rate at all. Instead, you’ll find yourself tracking a new metric: engagement rate. Instead of only looking at visitors who don’t move to another page on the website, engagement rate also considers the time spent on the landing page. This difference makes engagement rate and bounce rate incomparable.
Google Analytics 4 offers a range of engagement metrics including engaged sessions, engagement rate and engaged sessions per user.
IP anonymization
Under GDPR, your IP address is considered personal data. In Universal Analytics, you had to actively configure GA to anonymize IP addresses so that you could comply with GDPR legislation. However, with Google Analytics 4, IP addresses are automatically anonymized.
Landing page reports
Another metric missing as we move from Universal Analytics to Google Analytics 4 is landing page reports.
However, you can easily find out how many times the ‘session_start_ event’ was triggered on a particular page (this is what GA4 uses to trigger new sessions). This is an easy workaround to essentially create your own landing page reports.
App and site monitoring
Mobile app owners rejoice, you no longer have to measure your apps separately from your websites. So with GA4, you can accurately track cross-platform data between your site and app.
Attribution modelling
Attribution reporting isn’t changing much from Universal to GA4.
To view attribution reporting in Google Analytics 4, head to Advertising Snapshot, Model comparison or Conversion paths. Both of these will show you set reports that will help you link your marketing to your sales.
BigQuery schema
If you’re using BigQuery, then you’ll be pleased to hear that GA4 natively connects to it. Previously, it was only available to paying users of GA. However, the native connector’s schema is completely different from Google’s Universal Analytics schema. So, you may need to spend some time remapping your GA4 data before you can move it into BigQuery. Once you’ve done it, running SQL queries should be much easier as data is stored much more neatly.
Data retention
While Universal Analytics stores your data pretty much forever, Google Analytics 4’s data expires after 14 months.
In Universal Analytics, you can choose your data retention, with options: 14 months, 26 months, 38 months, 50 months and Do not automatically expire.
But with Google Analytics 4, you only have two options: 2 months and 14 months. While year-on-year comparison will still be possible, accessing your historic data will no longer be possible. And remember, you’ll only be able to access data from the day it was set up. The sooner you get it up and running, the more historical data you’ll have in your reports.
This transition serves as a momentous opportunity for ecommerce brands to re-evaluate their data analytics strategy, optimize their GA implementation, migrate to GA4, and leverage the true potential of a powerful, forward-thinking analytics platform. Aside from the improved tracking capabilities of the new platform, the process of switching to GA4 gives companies the chance to evaluate exactly how and what they want to see from their data, and then configure their GA property to be completely tailored for that business use case. Improved capabilities and customization will certainly be a win-win for any GA user.
Between strategizing your tracking, implementing tagging, custom events and metrics, establishing reporting and visualization, and performing rounds of QA on the property throughout, there’s a lot that goes into getting your GA4 implementation ready.
Universal Analytics’ successor is very different from what you’re familiar with. Apart from the new user interface, which many find challenging to navigate, there is a laundry list of issues with the feature set in GA4—from no bounce rate metrics to a lack of custom channel groups. Here are some of the limitations in GA4 from a user perspective that you might find frustrating.
Not-so-seamless migration
GA4 introduces a different reporting and measurement technology that is neither well understood nor widely accepted by the marketing community. There is no data or tag migration between the platforms, meaning you’d have to start from scratch. The challenge grows with the organization’s size—you can have hundreds of tags or properties to move.
Limits on custom dimensions
A custom dimension is an attribute you configure in your analytics tool to dive deeper into your data. You can then pivot or segment this data to isolate a specific audience or traffic for deeper analysis. While GA4 allows you to use custom dimensions to segment your reports, there’s a strict limit—you can only use up to 50.
Lack of custom channel grouping
Channel groupings are rule-based groupings of marketing channels and, when customized, allow marketers to check the performance of said channels efficiently. Unlike Universal Analytics, GA4 does not allow you to create custom channel groupings in the new interface, only default channel groupings. If you have a Magento eCommerce store and want to eliminate all the hassles, then you can easily install a Magento 2 GA4 Extension.
It’s startling to consider the deadline Google has left the analytics community when it comes to acting: Universal Analytics will stop processing new hits on July 1, 2023. This could be a way to motivate users to migrate more quickly. Perhaps Google was disappointed with the speed of adoption for GA4 and decided to act decisively for this next version.
Another possibility for the short deadline is that Google wants to cut costs and rid itself of technical debt associated with thousands of websites with legacy solutions installed (many of those users are not active users of the product). Since GA4 is designed to support Google’s advertising network, it guarantees more revenue than the competition.
Marketers considering switching to a new platform need to take a new analytics mindset. We are experiencing a rapidly rising awareness that data is of value and must be protected. Whatever the case, users need to prepare to move to GA4—or switch to an alternative.
The shift to GA4 is inevitable, but the least we can do is be prepared for it. As we’ve understood, it’s not all bad, and proper guidance can help in the move. Additionally, understanding the great shift to GA4 for eCommerce is vital for many reasons. The first reason, as we know, is to get customer insights, and the second is to amplify those insights to carve a better marketing strategy.
Running GA4 and UA side by side eliminates the moments of surprise. eCommerce businesses can seek the help of seasoned digital marketers for the GA4 migration, where they can guide them with steps or even help set up the same. Study the platform to get an idea about the UI changes, reporting styles, and, most importantly, how it collects and segregates user behavior.
Get in touch with our experienced eCommerce digital marketers to know more about GA4 and the move.
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As Head - Digital Marketing, Zenul leads the marketing and branding at Krish. He brings with him an in-depth understanding of the evolving digital ecosystem and has a proven expertise and experience in strategic planning, market and competition analysis, creating and implementing client-centered, lead-gen and brand marketing campaigns. He has a heart for technology innovation and has been a keynote speaker on various platforms.
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