What to Know: A Google Analytics 4 Guide

In this blog, we’ll cover the following topics regarding Google Analytics 4:

What Is Google Analytics 4?
How Are GA3 and GA4 Different?
What’s Changing in GA4?
What Features Does GA4 Provide Users?
Is a GA4 Update Required?

What Is Google Analytics 4?

Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is the newest version of Google’s analytics platform that tracks and measures traffic and performance on your website. On July 1, 2023, GA3 will stop processing data, so Google strongly recommends that users make the switch to GA4 as soon as possible.

How Are GA3 and GA4 Different?

GA3 and GA4 are different for a few reasons, including event tracking and recording sessions.

Event tracking is a key difference between GA3 and GA4. In GA3, events refer to clicks, while in GA4, an event can be any user behavior, such as page views and social interactions. You can also create multiple parameters for each event to obtain more information about where it’s logged in GA4.

GA3 and GA4 also differ when it comes to recording sessions. In GA3, a session is a group of hits performed by a user within a period of time, while GA4 tracks sessions as a group of events performed by a user, including making a purchase and clicking on a button.

What’s Changing in GA4?

GA4 changes include advanced machine learning, event-based measurements, and cross-device reporting. GA4 will also offer deeper insights into user behavior, which gives you a better understanding of your customers. We’ll discuss Google Analytics 4 features in more detail in the next section.

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What Features Does GA4 Provide Users?

Let’s take a look at some of the top features of GA4:

An Innovative Data Model
AI-Powered Insight and Predictions
Improved Data Control
A Complete View of the Customer Lifecycle
Predictive Audiences
Spam Prevention
Focuses on the User Journey

An Innovative Data Model

Gone are the days of the traditional session-based data model. With GA4, you can leverage user-based models and collect data in the form of events. Events are specific activities that occur on your website, such as page views, transactions, social interactions, and more. Each event has a unique name that identifies it and can include additional parameters to provide detailed metrics without infringing on privacy. This new GA4 feature gives you even more granular data to help you better understand your customers’ behavior, such as users switching devices or opening an email from a mobile device. Now you can improve your customer journey tracking efforts across multiple devices, create more targeted campaigns, and optimize the user experience.

AI-Powered Insight and Predictions

With new AI-powered insights, GA4 can help you plan effective marketing campaigns that target your products and services to the right audiences. By using advanced machine learning technology, this feature analyzes trends in customer data and predicts outcomes, such as conversion rates, churn rates, and more. That means you can use data-driven insights to make informed decisions and optimize your campaigns. GA4 could help you identify growing interest in a particular product. With this information, you can tailor your marketing campaigns to the right target audience and optimize your landing page content to reach more potential customers.

Improved Data Control

Because Google is phasing out third-party cookies, GA4 will help you prepare for a cookieless future with granular data controls. This provides important tools to help with GDPR compliance and other data regulations, like the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). As an example, GA4 has a consent mode that enables you to get user consent for analytics and ads and makes it easier for users to request data removal.

A Complete View of the Customer Lifecycle

GA4 tracks your customers’ behavior across devices and channels in a way that you can’t with GA3. The Reports page in GA4 is organized around the customer lifecycle, so you can see which channels are bringing customers to your website, the actions they’re taking while there, and whether or not they remain on the page after converting. With GA4’s comprehensive view of the customer lifecycle, you get a better understanding of how users interact with your website so you can make adjustments to improve their experience.

Let’s say that if you notice that users are abandoning your website after making a purchase, you can investigate and make changes to improve your retention rate, or if you want to increase your website traffic, GA4’s customer lifecycle view allows you to identify which channels are most successful at driving visitors to your site. That way, you can use those insights to refocus your marketing efforts.

Predictive Audiences

GA4’s predictive audiences features can help you reach the right people, with the right message—at the right time.

If your website or app has a high volume of traffic and purchases, you can build predictive audiences to increase engagement and sales. This uses machine learning to identify users likely to take a certain action, such as making a purchase within seven days or becoming a top spender within 28 days. You can use GA4’s predictive audiences feature in a variety of marketing efforts, such as advertising campaigns on Google Ads, Display and Video 360, Search Ads 360, and remarketing and re-engagement campaigns.

Are you familiar with Display Ads, or programmatic advertising? It’s becoming increasingly popular among successful advertisers. Check out our blog here for more info.

Spam Prevention

Spam referrals can be a real nuisance, disrupting your marketing campaigns and skewing data, but with GA4’s secret key, you can prevent spam traffic from entering your property and get an accurate picture of your performance. The secret key acts as a sort of “gatekeeper” for your GA4 property, only allowing legitimate data to enter and be tracked. The key can only be accessed from your data stream settings, giving you an extra layer of security.

Focuses on the User Journey

GA4 also allows you to stitch together sessions from multiple browsers and devices, such as desktop and mobile apps, to give you more details about customer behavior and how they interact with your products and services. You can also view your data in the GA4 UI or BigQuery to give you more data analysis flexibility.

Is a GA4 Update Required?

Essentially, yes. On July 1, 2023, GA3 will no longer process data, putting you at risk of losing valuable performance data. To avoid this, it’s essential to upgrade as soon as possible. If you’re still using GA3, you can add GA4 to your existing account and run them simultaneously until the deadline. We recommend making the switch as soon as you can to give you enough time to familiarize yourself with GA4’s features and interface.

Key Takeaways

GA4 offers a range of powerful features that will help you track your performance and make smarter marketing decisions. Its granular data collection and usage controls are designed to prioritize user privacy without storing IP addresses, making it easier to comply with international data protection regulations.

At Web Sprout, we understand how important data accuracy is for your digital marketing efforts. That’s why we highly recommend upgrading to GA4 before the July 2023 deadline. If you’re looking for a partner to take your GA4 efforts to the next level, schedule a sit-down with our CEO today.

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Everything You Need to Know About Google Analytics 4

What Is Google Analytics 4?

How Are GA3 and GA4 Different?

What’s Changing in GA4?