Update: Everything you need to know about Google Analytics 4

On July 1st, Google Analytics entirely switches to Google Analytics 4. What exactly does this change entail, and what does it mean for you? You can find out in this blog!

Google Analytics 4 is the latest version and will replace the existing Universal Analytics. The most significant difference between GA4 and Universal Analytics is that GA4 focuses on events instead of sessions. With GA4, you can track events such as opening a video, submitting a form or adding a product to the cart. 

For you as a website owner, switching to GA4 means that your tracking code will have to be updated and all reports will change. This may take some getting used to but ultimately GA4 offers more insight and opportunities to improve user experience and increase conversions.
 

What will change with GA4?

Google Analytics is moving from Universal Analytics (UA) to Google Analytics 4 (GA4). 

Some of the changes are: 

• New measurement model: GA4 uses an 'event-driven data model' instead of UA's session-based model. All events, such as page views, clicks and transactions, are stored and analysed. This provides a more detailed view of how visitors use your website or app and what actions they take.
• Integration with Google Ads: GA4 offers seamless integration with Google Ads, which makes ad performance a lot more insightful and helps to build audiences based on data from Google Ads. 
• New tracking capabilities: GA4 offers enhanced tracking capabilities of mobile apps, such as automatic tracking of screen titles, e-commerce, videos and newsletters. 
• Reports: GA4 offers new reports focusing on user behaviour, such as user lifecycles and engagement, which provide more insight into user behaviour across multiple devices and channels. 
• Privacy: Privacy was paramount while designing GA4. Therefore, IP addresses are automatically anonymised. Furthermore, data is deleted after 14 months, making it compliant with privacy laws such as the European GDPR.

What are the advantages?

The update to Google Analytics 4 changes how you can use data from website visitors. This change brings some great benefits, such as: 

• Improved cross-device tracking: GA4 uses a new tracking technology that allows you to track users across devices. This will enable you to better understand how users interact with your website, regardless of their device. 
• Focus on events: Google Analytics 4 focuses more on events and user behaviour rather than page views. This gives you more insight into how users behave on the website and when exactly they drop out. Among other things, this gives insight into people's actions before purchasing or signing up for the newsletter. 
• Improved privacy: in line with privacy legislation, it is possible to delete data linked to individual users. 
• Machine learning: through automatically generated insights, you instantly get a clear report of the most popular pages, the most engaged target groups and which actions lead most to conversions. 
   

Switching to GA4

To set up Google Analytics 4, you will have received an invitation from Google. In the Garden Connect platform, you can change these settings yourself. If you go to "Admin menu" and then "Google settings", you can easily download the manuals.

For customers who purchase one of our Google Ads or Local SEO Marketing services, we take care of the switch: for them, all GA4 settings are already set correctly. 

Have you still yet to succeed, or would you like our help with this? Then contact your account manager; we are happy to help you!