GA4 Is Coming: Three steps to get your Google data house in order

Why it is critical for brands to smoothly transition to Google Analytics 4

For almost 20 years, Google Analytics has been the gold standard in web analytics. The free tool came on the market and disrupted the biggest players in the analytics game, gobbling up market share and gaining legions of followers who—if only for their employability—became versed in its variety of terminologies, views on web data, and multitude of nuances.

Now, all that is about to change. By July 1, 2023, Google is forcing all Google Analytics users to migrate from Universal Analytics (UA or GA3) to Google Analytics 4 (GA4). Brands that don’t manage this transition well risk losing historical data and not having events and conversions configured and linked to their ad platforms (namely Google Ads). This means potentially less opportunity to optimize, negative site performance, and a major learning curve when they’re caught flat footed.

That means it’s time to get your Google data house in order and bone up on the new platform. Rhea + Kaiser can help!

WHAT ARE THE MAJOR DIFFERENCES?
The core difference we see between UA and GA4 comes down to the measurement models. UA relies on sessions and pageviews. Sessions can contain multiple user interactions, including pageviews, events, and transactions.

GA4 relies on events and parameters. Every interaction, including sessions, pageviews and others is an event. GA4 events are different than UA events in that the fields by which to classify events are no longer limited to category, action, and label. Those three fields helped UA users organize events in simple ways, but GA4 aims to simplify the process even further.

Ultimately, for most “basic” users, most events will be collected automatically, meaning less time spent on manually classifying and tagging events with uniform category-action-label descriptors. For more advanced users, customizations are available which allow more flexibility and expansion beyond the limits of UA. There are some preset events, such as page view, which contains page location, page referrer, and page title. However, in GA4, the number of reports that synthesize pageview or session data is reduced, which shifts the priority toward identifying the events that are important to your business/website/app and building the reporting views to capture the insights you need from your data.

In total there are 4 types of events in GA4:

• Automatically collected events, including those such as page view
• Enhanced measurement events, which are also out-of-the-box like the automatic events, but can be enabled/disabled based on site or app functionality
• Recommended events, which are those that Google advises users to set up based on the type of website or app the users have and the industry it falls in
• Custom events, which are those that are created and implemented by the users based on unique requirements of their site or app. For example, an organization that fundraises on its website might create a custom event to distinctively call donations. Custom events are limited to 500 total events.
• Grasping the distinctions above will lead toward deeper learning on how to configure GA4 to fit your unique needs and will get your team up to speed and as adept with GA4 as they are now with UA

HOW TO GET STARTED ON YOUR TRANSITION TO GA4
Learning a new platform can be intimidating, but you still have time. Internal marketing teams and agencies alike must take the first steps toward the transition ASAP, but those with advanced knowledge of the platform will be best equipped to reap the new and powerful functionality. 

At R+K, we’ve already started helping our clients take their first steps and begin customizing their GA4 setups. Here are the steps we’re taking (and you should too!) to get ready for July 1, 2023.

1. Install: Start by installing GA4 on your website in parallel to your UA installation. We recommend using Google Tag Manager as this will provide you the most flexibility in installation and configurations down the line.
2. Audit: Review your current UA setup — take account of the current events, conversions, and other unique configurations you have in place. If you’ve had a bloated event and goal tracking setup, now is a great opportunity to curate your data feed to gather only the most critical data points you need and filter out the other noise.

EDUCATE
Start learning how to migrate your tracking schema from UA to GA4 based on the audit you conduct. Continue running your UA in parallel while you experiment with the new configuration protocols. You might find that some of your current tracking configurations are not possible—GA4 is still a relatively “new” platform, so more functionalities may come down the line. Ultimately, discovering what works and what doesn’t will help you get lead time on modifying your internal or external reports and with setting expectations for stakeholders who are involved in the process.

ACHIEVING EXPERTISE IN GA4 TAKES TIME
Here are some helpful resources to help speed your learning process:

• Search Engine Land GA4 Migration Guide – Longtime trusted resource for all things search offers a high-level overview for the migration process
• Google Support GA4 Migration Guide – Google’s own growing library of resources and insights with step-by-step guides on migration, including difficulty ratings
• Analytics Mania on YouTube – Maybe the best video instructors out there to offer explanations and walkthroughs on all things Analytics, especially GA4

If you would like to learn more about how the GA4 will affect your marketing tracking and analytics or how Rhea + Kaiser can help you transition to the platform, contact our Business Development Director