By now, you know that the new version of Google Analytics is coming (GA4) and that the old version of GA (Universal Analytics) will stop collecting data as of July 1, 2023. No doubt, you’re hoping for some exciting updates with this mandatory change. While change can be scary, we’ve found plenty of good reasons to look forward to GA4 and wanted to share a few!

Tracking events and conversions becomes much more flexible

Think of events as any important interaction that you want to be aware of on your website. For example: clicking on a button or scrolling down a page. In the case of a real estate website, maybe it’s using a mortgage calculator, sharing a listing with a friend, or saving a home as a favorite. 

GA4 makes it easier to set up custom event tracking, and also to designate select events as conversions. We can generate reports that show broader event activity among your site visitors, even while dialing in conversion reports to focus more narrowly on higher-value events like submitting a “contact us” form or phoning your brokerage. 

GA4 offers more insight into how channels work together

GA4 is far superior to UA when it comes to knowing when a visitor has interacted with your business through multiple devices and multiple channels. For instance, someone might see an ad while on their phone and click through to your site. Later, they go on their laptop, search for your business name in Google, and fill out a form on your site. GA4 can more easily tell that this was a single user, and then report back to you how the ad and the organic search listing contributed to this visitor becoming a lead. 

 Reporting Example: Conversion Paths 

Enhance your advertising with GA4 data

GA4 includes updates that improve the integration of data reported in Google’s Ads and Analytics platforms. This admittedly gets a little technical, but we think you’ll love the end result: better flow of actionable data, both into and out of your Google Ads campaigns. 

Consider this: 

• GA4 makes it easier to define audience segments based on site engagement – which can then be easily shared into a linked Ads account. For example, you can create an audience based on users visiting a certain page, and target that audience in an ad campaign highlighting the content they were interested in. That’s not new, but it’s certainly easier. 
• GA4 and Google Ads will now reflect the same conversion window settings on imported goals. Conversion window is the number of days following an ad click in which a conversion is tracked. These were previously set independently, causing some apparent discrepancies in conversion data on each platform. Not anymore!

Few would dispute that the greatest benefit of Google Analytics 4 is the opportunity to gain much more insight into users and site performance. Sure, taking full advantage of GA4’s flexibility takes some knowledge, time, and effort. But we think the ability to customize your reporting to be even more insightful and more actionable is incredibly exciting.   

This is the third article in our series on Google Analytics 4. Take a look at Part 1 and Part 2.