Google has recently launched the final version of its analytics tool: Google Analytics 4 or GA4 . This is a product that will replace the current version of Google Analytics, called Universal Analytics, in the future . Let's look at the relevance of this change and how it influences the measurement of your business metrics.
Web analytics without borders between devices and platforms
Google Analytics has been evolving since its inception after the acquisition of Urchin in 2005.
evolution-google-analytics
After the first version of Google Analytics, in 2008 it evolved into Classic Google Analytics, and in 2013 Universal Analytics appeared. Today we welcome Google Analytics 4.
In August 2020, Google surprised us with the launch of a beta called Google Analytics Web + App , which was designed to solve one of the problems that digital analysts have been struggling with for some time: user tracking .
“A step towards user analytics: multiplatform and multidevice”
Today, user navigation on the Internet is nothing like what it was when Google Universal Analytics was conceived. Today, navigation patterns require us to focus self employed phone number list on the user. This means that we must carry out multi-device and multi-platform analytics: we are interested in tracing the user's route, including the jumps they can make between their smartphone and laptop, or between the app and the website.
Google Analytics 4 moves to protect user privacy
google-analytics-4-new-things
There are three key factors why Google has taken this path:
1. Changes in privacy regulations
As of October 31, to illustrate with the most recent example, new privacy and cookie measures are in effect . These are more restrictive measures regarding the consented use of cookies. This fact has a significant impact on the ability to capture user browsing data on our websites, since when a user does not explicitly accept tracking on a website or app, we will not be able to measure their browsing.
There are some who have been late to do so, and have been exposed to heavy fines, such as Iberia, which has been fined €30,000 for failing to comply with the regulations . If you have any questions about how to comply with the regulations, do not hesitate to contact us.
2. Search engine updates
Safari started blocking third-party cookies by default, and the major browsers are following suit. Firefox already partially blocks some third-party cookies, while Google's own Chrome has announced that it will block them completely in 2022 .
3. Privacy control is important for the user
These moves by browsers or by legislation itself are born out of concern for privacy on the part of users, who see a loss of control over their browsing data on the Internet, and now seem to be becoming aware of this.
“Google Analytics 4 also responds to consumer demand for privacy control”
However, we are not witnessing the disappearance of digital analytics , far from it. The disappearance of third-party cookies is not the end of user tracking on the Internet. The adaptation of major players such as Google is the best sign that other solutions will replace the obsolete ones, and this is where Google Analytics 4 comes into play.
What are the advantages of introducing Google Analytics 4?
We have detected several advantages in these new properties of Google Analytics 4, among which the following stand out:
1. User analytics
As we mentioned at the beginning of the article, today we find that our users browse from different devices, such as mobile and computer, or even on different platforms of our company, such as our website and our app. All of this is a challenge that GA4 allows us to work on, since it introduces significant improvements in multi-device and multi-platform tracking.
This is possible thanks to the way the new GA4 collects user navigation information. It is a new event-based data model , something that works naturally in web developments such as apps, in addition to using the User ID to identify the user and to be able to link the different visits of the user even if the user changes devices.
2. Machine learning and predictive metrics
Another new feature that Google Analytics 4 vs. Google Universal Analytics introduces is the ability to learn from the data collected in order to make predictions about our metrics. For example, it can help us forecast:
What is the possibility of generating conversions ?
How likely is it that I will get downloads from my catalog.
What behavior can you expect from an audience?
This is a very high value for making marketing decisions. While it is true that in terms of e-commerce we are still waiting to see how it resolves certain issues, this point is a giant step towards increasingly actionable analytics.
google-analytics-reports-4
Reporting module in Google Analytics 4, on the probability of user abandonment according to the traffic source.
3. Data desampling
To date, one of the problems we have encountered in Universal Analytics analytics is that, when using platforms with a large amount of traffic, Analytics randomly samples the data and offers us a percentage of the information, which leads to possible lack of rigor in the analysis.
With Google Analytics 4, the problem has been quickly solved: sampling is eliminated and the information is stored in BigQuery .
What do we suggest you do from pinchaaqui.es?
Google Analytics 4 offers an alternative for the future, although today it is not yet a stable and useful tool in its own right. We cannot yet do without our analytics with Universal Analytics, but we can already take the first steps while we get to know better how GA4 works.
Therefore, our recommendation is to install Google Analytics 4 tracking on your website and/or any other platform today. This implementation will coexist with Universal Analytics, but will allow us to start collecting data in GA4.
“Install tracking with Google Analytics 4 today to be prepared for the analytics of the future”
Google has already announced that it will no longer maintain Universal Analytics, and that all improvements will be implemented in Google Analytics 4. In the future, when Google permanently migrates to GA4, we will no longer have the information from the current Universal Analytics properties. Going forward, with this early installation, we will begin to generate a historical record to be prepared for the day when the migration to Google Analytics 4 is complete.