According to the latest news (although they knew to move the deadline for some changes) the transition from Universal Analytics, actually the current Google Analytics interface, is moving to the new Google Analytics 4 interface.
As of July 1, 2023, Universal Analytics will stop collecting data. Already on July 2, 2023, you will see zeros in the old analytics. Every day after that you will see only zeros and nothing more. For the next six months, you will be able to access data before July 1, 2023, in the old analytics. After that, you are left without the old analysis.
Why is Google doing this? Because he wants to switch us to new analytics, the next generation of tracking the behavior of our website or application visitors. The interface of the new analytics has been significantly changed compared to the old analytics, i.e. existing. It is much easier to analyze, navigate and set up. Let's go one by one now.
- During the setup itself, Google offers you certain events that you previously had to set independently or with the help of an expert, such as monitoring the performance of video material on the site or monitoring scrolling on the site, which is especially important if you have content that users read.
- Real-time analytics is no longer read in terms of the average of the last 5 minutes, but the last 30 minutes. It is the first step that shows that the new analytics is going in the direction of user engagement, and not just visits and recording awareness metrics. This is a cosmetic change, but now you see all real-time analytics data on one screen, unlike the old analytics when you had 5 different tabs.
- A Life cycle segment has been introduced that combines Acquisition (how users get to the site or application), Engagement (how they consume content and which content), and Monetization (how we meet goals and monetize them). Unlike the old analysis, you now have a lot fewer tabs, but in some parts even more information within the new data analysis sections. It's that better interface.
- New analytics is based on events. In the old event, all activities that were not predestined were marked. Now it is even a page view event and a session, i.e. a visit.
- If you are in the e-commerce business, there is a whole set of reports, just like in the old analytics. The advantage of the new report is that everything is in one place and an additional opportunity for businesses that have the new Category > Subcategory > Group > Subgroup, to be able to analyze that level of granularity, which you could not do in the old analytics.
- Special emphasis is placed on the Retention section. This is the last but most important step in the sales funnel. Increasing retention metrics saves us a budget, creates loyal users, and is often free brand advocates.
- It is now possible to track visitors' behavior on different devices and how they use them to access the site, which in the old analytics was possible in the Beta phase of the report which was full of bugs.
- Added the Explorations section, where the entire set of visualizations is located in the Template gallery. Here you can find visually adequate reports through which you can spot potential problems on the site or application, track key success indicators, or communicate reports further to stakeholders.
- The last thing, but not the least important, is the Advertising report. In it, you can find data about campaigns, costs, and goals that have been met through campaigns. And not only that. It is very important that within this report you have a view of how the channels mutually influence each other, which are important in the first part, the middle part, and the last part of the sales funnel, and which channels you should focus on.
Another important difference is that in the old analytics, you could not have a detailed view of what was happening on the application. You could only have separate web and app analytics. With the new analytics, you can have everything in one place and track how visitors use all your platforms and what exactly they do on them.
The new analyst is based on machine learning and a data-driven analysis model. This allows you to have the analytics itself create audiences that should buy a specific product within a certain time frame, to use these automated audiences in your Google advertising campaigns.
And finally, a big advantage of the new analytics GA4 compared to the old analytics is the ability to connect with Google Big Query”. It is a data warehouse created by Google where you can store your data. An additional advantage of this way of working is that it allows you server or server-side tracking, instead of the current client-side tracking.
Current client-side tracking means renting and using publicly available free Google servers. This further means that you will not have 100% reliable data and will often be sampled by the so-called data sampling. For example, if you take a period of the last 6 months, often Google will give you data on a sample of 36.71% (taken as a rough percentage), where you will not see 100% of the data. By switching to server-side tracking, you no longer have that problem.
You must switch to Google Analytics 4 and start collecting data now. Don't allow yourself the luxury that after July 1st, Google Analytics will stop collecting data. You must have continuity in the data because there is nothing more difficult for analysis than when data is missing for a certain period, especially if it is important for business.
I am primarily referring to travel agencies. If you are reading this and know agency owners/managers, please reach out to them and help them have the data promptly. If you want to help them with this service, sign up for our "Moving to Google Analytics 4" workshop. Secure your place in time to help business owners or your business thrive and use data in the right way.