Growing Pains: Transitioning to Google Analytics GA4
What’s Happening with Analytics?
Google announced in March 2022 that it will be sunsetting Universal Analytics on July 1, 2023 in favor of Google Analytics 4 (GA4). This means that any UA properties will no longer record or process any data after that point. The long and short of it is this: if you don’t start using GA4 by July 2023, you’ll no longer have access to any important new metrics for your website.
Why?!? Why the Change?
Change is never easy, and in this instance, we’ve all become very accustomed to Universal Analytics in its decade of existence. GA4 was released in October 2020. Nearly two years later it still feels foreign and clunky. Some features from UA are missing from GA4 (where are the filters?!) And Google has yet to update its own internal training documentation.
So why the change? It comes down to this:
UA relies on technology that has since evolved in an age of smartphones, apps, and updated privacy regulations.
UA relies on cookies and the ability to track IP addresses. Ten years ago this was the standard. Now in the age of the California Consumer Privacy Act in the US and the General Data Protection Regulation in the EU, something had to give. To do this, Google had to refresh how it approached monitoring and measuring website activity.
GA4 is a Whole New Approach to Tracking
UA’s model is based on sessions and pageviews, collecting various hit types (user interaction) within sessions. This is great until we think about how much data can get lost in the shuffle within a user’s session. If a user watches a video multiple times within one session, that counts as only one conversion in UA. In GA4, this would be four. Why? Because each video view is an event.
From session starts and page loads to clicks and scrolling, GA4 is event-based, tracking elements on individual pages to gauge performance. Read more about UA data versus GA4 data from Google to learn more about UA hit types and GA4 events.
The goal of GA4 is to give a fuller picture of user behavior, regardless of browser, app, or software, and it does this without relying on cookies or store IPs. GA4 is built to adapt to ever changing privacy implications.
What Does GA4 Mean for Schools?
Whether you’re a college, university, or a private independent school, Google Analytics is a vital part of tracking KPIs and developing a strategic digital marketing plan. What content is getting the most traction by prospective students and parents? How is that new major page performing? What paid campaign landing pages are working and aren’t?
We will still be able to see this data in GA4, though some of it may be found in different places and be called different things. The newness of GA4 may feel very daunting and, to be honest, a little frustrating. Google’s own training documentation for Google Analytics Certification is still for UA and has yet to be updated. No doubt, Google will be busy over the next twelve months to get everything current and refreshed. Thankfully, because we still have plenty of time until UA is phased out, we’ve got some space to learn at our own pace.
Why is it Important to Migrate to GA4?
After July 2023, UA will no longer record any data. If you don’t have GA4 running on your website, you will be unable to access any new metrics from Google. As scary as this may sound, there’s no reason to sound the alarm just yet. There is plenty of time to implement GA4 and get familiar with its new interface. In order to have the most seamless experience, we recommend:
Configuring and implementing GA4 as soon as possible. GA4 can run alongside UA. The sooner the better, though we recommend setting up GA4 by July 2022 so you have a full year’s worth of data collected in GA4 when July 2023 rolls around.
Review existing analytics set up to re-familiarize yourself with the current settings in place. This will come in handy as more supporting documentation is released from Google on how to customize reports in GA4.
How to Implement GA4
Google was thoughtful enough to make it ridiculously easy to get GA4 up and running. When logging into Google Analytics, click into the Admin (gear icon) section. Under the “Property” section, you will see an option marked “GA4 Setup Assistant”:
From here, Google makes it simple to create a GA4 property associated with your existing Analytics account. Once the property is created, share the data stream info (either the gtag tracking code or the Google Tag Manager code) with your web team, and they will be able to add the tracking info to the website.
A few additional tips:
Enable “enhanced events” under the Data Streams setting. This will start tracking additional events like outbound clicks, site search, video engagement, and file downloads in addition to page views and scrolls.
Consider reviewing additional conversion events. GA4 automatically pre-defines five types of conversions, but these typically revolve around purchases. To further define conversion in GA4, click Configure > Events and toggle which events should be tracked as conversions. Check out Google’s documentation on modifying conversion events and creating events in GA4.
For the time being, don’t sweat Goals and Conversion tracking. For now, focus on getting GA4 up and running. Once this is done, you can start to dig into carrying over conversion goals from UA into GA4. There will absolutely be a learning curve around interpreting GA4s data - some metrics we’re accustomed to seeing will be gone; there may also be other metrics we didn’t previously have. It will be a challenge to learn the new interface, but in the long run it will be worth it!
Final Thoughts
Change is tough, especially in a room full of tech-savvy internet people set in their ways! The good news is that this change is allowing us all to adapt to the ever-evolving landscape of progressing technology and user demand and expectation of privacy. We’ve come a long way from Microsoft Windows phones, Pebble watches, Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram, the release of iPad mini, and the iPhone 5 (all these things occurred in 2012). We’re long overdue for an overhaul in how we record and interpret our website metrics. And who knows…maybe we’ll end up enjoying the new perspectives GA4 offers.
Other helpful resources related to GA4:
How to Add GA4 to a Site that Already Has UA
Tips for Implementing GA4 with Google Tag Manager
Migrating Goals from UA to GA4
SearchEngineJournal: Getting Started with GA4
SearchEngineJournal: 17 Top Guides & Educational Resources for GA4