Don’t Panic

The appearance of Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is causing a lot of confusion with its new interface and data model.

However, the move to GA4 from the current version (otherwise known as Google Analytics Classic or Universal Analytics) offers significant advantages and benefits.

  • Everything is event-based, which makes much more sense when deciding what you need to measure.

  • The integration with Google Ads and Google Tag Manager is seamless. Importing of conversions from GA4 into Google Ads is easier and more reliable.

  • GA4 data is unsampled, meaning you can start to understand individual user behavior at the path level and even extract raw data for clickstream analysis using Google Big Query.

  • Event-based unsampled data allows for more advanced engagement reporting from within the GA4 console.

There’s one major consideration though — in GA Classic it’s easy to dip into the interface and pull basic numbers. This, for now at least, is less easy in GA4 and means more thought is required to set up reporting for the metrics that matter.

This should be seen as an opportunity to spring-clean and get the set up right

That’s where we can help.

 

GA4 Configuration & Migration

We believe your analytics setup and reporting should support your business goals and our process reflects this.

  1. Discovery - we document how the new GA4 setup and reporting should ladder up to the business goals.

  2. Architecture - we plan out the GA4 events and parameters necessary to fulfill the goals and the reporting requirements.

  3. Integration - we identify and document any new code, GTM and 3rd party integrations that are needed. This may include your CRM or Google Biq Query for GA4 data export.

  4. Implementation - we will implement in Google Tag Manager or provide code examples for your developers to action.

  5. Reporting - we will set up the GA4 reports and GA4 explorations and, if needed, bring together other data sources into Looker (formerly Google Data Studio).

Advanced GA4 Attribution

In addition we can also implement our Data-Driven Clickstream Attribution system to give the most accurate estimate of value for each of your online marketing channels using the GA4 data export, Google Bg Query and the power of the Google Cloud Platform.