Every business with an online presence needs to run appropriate analytical studies. Without that, it won’t be possible for anyone to know the user activities, experience, revenues, online traffic inflow, performance, and many other such verticals. Although many different analytical tools are available, Google provides the most accurate software to run website analysis.
However, in 2012, Google introduced another analytical platform apart from the fundamental tool, Google Analytics. This new platform, Universal Analytics, has become the most dominant tool. The prime driving factor behind this prominence is the accuracy and compatibility with more analytical factors for UA.
What Is GA4, and Should One Upgrade to It?
While maximum websites on Google use Universal Analytics, there has been an increasing number of events where these websites migrate to GA4. So, Before learning the process of migration from UA to GA4, let’s have a fundamental idea about Google Analytics 4.
Google Analytics 4, or GA4, has recently been considered the future version of website and application analytical tools. Not only is the platform more robust and accurate, but it also supports in-depth reporting views.
In October, Google announced that GA4 property would be added to the analytical list once a new property is created for any website or application. If anyone has a website and an application, all the values and aspects will be combined on this analytical platform for a more comprehensive and uniform study.
If a website uses Universal Analytics from Google, it is easily upgraded to GA4. That’s because Google is planning to terminate or end UA and all other earlier versions of Google Analytics and bring maximum uniformity to the platform. Apart from this, GA4 is also the only way to implement dependency on first-party cookies instead of all the third-party cookies, as per Google’s announcement.
What Are the New Changes to Be Seen in GA4?
There have been a substantial number of upgrades in Google Analytics when compared to UA. Knowing these will help you make a well-informed decision about the migration that needs to be done at some point.
- In UA, the common term for any website or application is goals. However, in GA4, the term will get replaced with conversions. Instead of setting 20 goals, users will be allowed to set 30 conversions. Also, Google Analytics 4 will support conversions based on events and not duration and destinations.
- One of the significant changes that will help every digital marketer is the automatic tracking ability of a few events in Google Analytics 4. For instance, it can automatically track the first visit, session start, video start, view search results, and file download events. So, there is no need to modify any code or add extra tags to track the events after migrating from UA to GA4.
- Google Analytics 4’s upgraded design makes it more intuitive, user-friendly, and fast. For example, in earlier versions of Google Analytics, a particular report was split into multiple tabs on the same screen, making it difficult to study the results and make deductions. But in the upgraded version, all the tabs will be combined and displayed in the overview section. This will be the summary page, and you can view the details of each tab by moving to the concerned widgets.
- Unlike UA, Google Analytics 4 utilizes three Identity Spaces that will help marketers identify users across multiple devices and link them together. As a result, they can understand a user’s journey with the concerned business, regardless of the device through which the website or application is accessed.
- Another upgrade in Google Analytics 4 is in the form of an Audience List. In other words, the user data can be further used to build a customized Audience List and further integrated with Google Ads.
How to Upgrade UA to GA4 in the Easiest Way?
Since there have been several modifications in Google Analytics compared to Universal Analytics, the migration process isn’t easy. You need to introduce new elements before the migration can be completed properly. Below we have explained the entire process of migrating Universal Analytics to GA4 like a professional.
1. Making an Audit of the UA Property
The first step in the migration is to make a property of Universal Analytics and ensure you have gathered enough knowledge about UA before starting the migration process.
First, research all the properties you have created in UA for your website and mobile application differently. This will ensure you don’t miss any critical property that can hamper your Google Analytics result once the migration is successful.
2. Planning the GA4 Account Structure
One of the major drawbacks of Google Analytics 4 is the absence of views. As a result, you should make a detailed plan of how you want to structure the account according to the business requirements.
The structural plan will include all the properties and streams so that you can track your business events and study your target users in the best possible way. Moreover, the new Google Analytics version is a bit complicated as each property will track the website and application data together. So, appropriate planning is essential.
3. Managing the User Permissions
There is a striking lack of clarification when you don’t decide who will manage the analytical account on Google. In addition, you cannot give universal access to everyone to the analytical account because it contains confidential information about your business, website, mobile application, and user profiles. That’s why establishing proper user permission is essential to ensure every run smoothly.
4. Checking the Property Settings
At the time of running the audit of your Universal Analytics account, record all the settings available. For example, if you have an e-commerce business, you must take notes of the currencies and time zones being tracked to date.
This way, the settings won’t be mismatched after you migrate UA to GA4. Also, suppose any earlier property has cross-domain tracking implemented in it. In that case, you must note all those properties because the exact needs to be activated on Google Analytics 4.
5. Identifying the Events to Be Migrated
Once you have the account structured and set up, it’s time to identify what kinds of events you would migrate. Again, as we have already discussed that events and goals are substantially different in GA4 when compared to Universal Analytics, this step should be handled by an expert having enough experience in either.
To begin with, you have to list all the events in Universal Analytics that should be present in GA4. However, you must include only those events that add value and meaning to your business.
6. Verifying All the Custom Metrics and Dimensions to Be Set Up
After noting down all the events you need to migrate in GA4 from Universal Analytics, it’s time to identify the metrics and dimensions that should be customized from scratch. In UA, you will find four scopes: Product, Hit, Session, and User.
Unfortunately, you do not use all these four scopes in Google Analytics 4. There, you can classify the metrics based on user and event scopes, which is why planning is helpful.
7. Recreating the Conversions on GA4
There are goals in Universal Analytics which had further known as conversions in Google Analytics 4. So, you need to ensure both goals and conversions are at par with one another without any discrepancy, as that will negatively impact your business and users.
Upgrading 20 goals to 30 conversions won’t be a cup of cake. That’s why we understand what goals were being set at Universal Analytics and accordingly segregate them into conversions for Google Analytics 4.
8. Implementing E-Commerce Tracking
You must also identify all the e-commerce events you used to track with Universal Analytics implemented in GA4. For example, if you want to follow the old UA data schema, you must write all the dataLayer objects from scratch to migrate successfully into GA4.
9. Linking Ga4 to Other Tools
You can link your Google Analytics account to Google ads or 360 ads. As a result, using the user data in advertisement campaigns for promotional content or having higher exposure to your business will be easier.
Conclusion
Google Analytics 4 provides the leverage to modify how businesses used to track user data across different devices in separate ways. In earlier days, when data used to be tracked separately, there were several discrepancies and mismatches in the records. Identifying all of them during audits resulted in time and effort consumption but there was no yield of a positive outcome.
So, migrating the existing Universal Analytics account or property to Google Analytics 4 sounds more feasible for every business with a presence across different platforms. This will bring uniformity in analytical studies and allow professionals to learn more about their user journeys across various devices without limitations or restrictions.
Furthermore, Google Analytics 4 is much easier to use and manage when compared to Universal Analytics, thanks to the new modifications in the backend functions.
