GA4 is a Year away. But why wait?

On July 1st 2023, Universal Analytics properties will stop processing new hits. This means that until this date you can still use and collect data using these properties, but after then- if you have not switched to a different data collection property- you will lose all data you have built and collected. However, this data can be migrated from Universal Analytics to Google Analysis 4 (GA4), which is a new and improved property made by Google for data collection and analysis. So, to keep the data you have been collecting, you will have to switch to GA4 before Universal analytics shuts down.

What does Google Analytics 4 do?

• It is a service that enables you to measure traffic and engagement across your websites and apps
• Unlike Universal Analytics, it incorporates user-ID across all reporting, analysis and insights and does not require a separate user-ID reporting view
• It uses events instead of session-based data. By moving to an events-based model, GA4 is more flexible and better able to predict user behaviour
• It includes privacy controls such as cookie-less measurement
• It provides automatic tracking for some events

To ensure that you can keep all past data whilst being able to collect more useful data, you need to install Google Analytics 4 before July 1st 2023. Without making this change, you won’t be able to continue reporting on the performance of your website.

What are the benefits of switching to Google Analytics 4?

• It has a more user-friendly interface and a more straightforward design
• You have more control over the data you wish to analyse
• You collect more detailed and useful data because of the events-based model
• Can look at their all-time data reports and see what individual users are doing within a 30 minutes period
• Prioritises active users in reports rather than total users which were used in Universal Analytics reports
• Full cross-device reports
• It focuses more on the detail of the user journey
• Provides debugging within the reporting interface
• Provides a new set of metrics for more accurate engagement tracking

During the transition period in between the two services, you can use both Universal Analytics and GA4 parallel to each other to ease the transition and become more familiar with a new software whilst still receiving data from somewhere which you fully understand.

The latest the switch should be made to ensure you are keeping all data you've found previously is July 1st 2023, but if you make the switch earlier, you benefit by growing accustomed to a different way of accessing data, and also you experience the new additions and positive changes from Universal Analytics earlier, which gives you better data to improve your website.

To add Google Analytics to a site which already has Universal, the GA4 setup assistant will add a Google Analytics 4 property alongside the existing Universal Analytics property. Your Universal Analytics property will continue to collect data until the closing date when GA4 will take over.

If you need any help with setting up or using GA4, please contact the Black Lab team, and we will assist you.