You have worked hard to grow your business using the most advanced digital marketing techniques. But do you know without a proper measurement plan, all those efforts could be meaningless? This is where digital marketing analytics comes into play.
Measuring digital marketing performance is one of the essential missions of digital marketers. To do that, digital marketers and stakeholders put their heads together to set up marketing KPIs. Next, they track those KPIs using a marketing analytics platform such as Google Analytics.
Google Analytics, without a doubt, is one of the best and most widely used tools for marketers. Although, it’s not the easiest tool to use. Especially for non-technical people. Some marketers learned how to see their data in their favour, whereas some of us struggled to get a basic report over the years.
But finally, we have got good news! A couple of years ago, Google introduced Google Analytics 4. This is ground-breaking because when you check out GA4, it looks much more straightforward and user-friendly. This is important because allowing more marketers to use such an analytics tool is a significant development.
Google also took into account the buyer’s journey when redesigning the GA4. When you log in to Analytics 4, the left menu report tab includes a section called life cycle with acquisition, engagement, monetization, and retention breakdown. In addition, there is a user section with two items: demographics and tech.
GA4 – Life cycle
What is Google Analytics 4?
Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is the latest version of GA. It has the same purpose as the former analytics: showing us all kinds of user data from our website or app in the way we want. But that’s not it. Google developed this version with one thing in mind: Engagement.
If you have never used Google Analytics, there is not much to digest. But if you have been using Universal Analytics for a while, you will have to migrate to this new version by implementing another JavaScript to your site’s back end. Once you do that, you jump straight ahead to a whole different level of data.
What’s the difference between Universal Analytics (UA) and GA4?
As we mentioned in the beginning, all the data is presented in a very user-friendly way. So, there is a vast UX improvement in the new analytics, but that’s not all. Here are a couple of core differences between universal analytics and GA4.
● There is a new metric on the user side of things with the addition of active users. Now, in addition to total and new users, we can see our active users. Active users are users that are engaged with a website or app, according to Google.
● Universal Analytics is user-based, whereas GA4 is event-based. This will result in changes in the number of conversions. Let’s say you have defined a form submit conversion goal. Your user submits your form twice. UA would count that as one conversion, whereas GA4 would count that as 2 conversions as there have been two events.
● The bounce rate metric also changes. If a user only visits one page and leave, that’s a bounce in UA. But GA4 is more engagement-focused, so it counts users that are not engaged as bounces. In other words, the bounce rate is the inverse of the engagement rate.
GA4 – User & Traffic
Why should you install Google Analytics 4 (GA4) for your website now?
The main reason is quite obvious; Google will begin to turn down Universal Analytics and stop processing data on July 1st, 2023. It’s happening, so the earlier you migrate, the better you can adopt and start using the GA4.
But that’s only the obligation part of the things. GA4 is much easier to develop and read data. It’s more accurate and engagement focused. Therefore, measuring through GA4 is a better overall measurement strategy.
Although it’s pretty easy to migrate to GA4, complex site migration, such as a large e-commerce brand, you might face some more challenges. Most businesses will also have to create new audiences and wait for them to accumulate. Therefore, starting today to get things right sounds like the only option.
The benefits of using Google Analytics 4 (GA4)
App & Web View Combo: this is exciting for advertisers who want to see the web and app performance in one place. Previously, you had to get these reports from different places, which added much more time and complexity to the reports.
Predictive reports: GA4 can apply machine learning models (AI) to your data to calculate the probability of churn, the likelihood of conversion, and the revenue forecast. You can then export these audiences to Google Ads and Google Marketing Platform to target users who are more likely to have higher value or to re-engage with users who may be about to quit the app.
Improved Privacy: Google Analytics 4 has more privacy controls as soon as it’s installed. This gives you precise control over which users you collect data about and the ability to use that data in targeted advertising campaigns, allowing you to comply with your business’s privacy policies. Also, when we can no longer track users due to privacy measures, we can expect more modelling capabilities to be introduced to fill some data gaps.
Free BigQuery Export: This feature was previously only available in Google Analytics 360. Now even free users can export unsampled data to BigQuery, allowing for detailed reporting and customized analysis.
