In this final part of our Demystifying Google Analytics 4 series, we recap what we’ve covered, outline the current timeline, highlight some changes since we started this series, and give some further resources to help you carry on your GA4 journey. With just weeks left now before Universal Analytics stops collecting data, getting to grips with GA4 is essential. So why not take advantage of our special offer to all Swydo customers for 10% off each ticket with code ‘SWYDO10’ on our 6-week GA4 Immersion course.

GA4 Recap

The overarching aim of this series was to provide reassurance that the impending sunset of Universal Analytics is not bad news, despite the initial panic in the industry when it was first announced. It is an entirely new and different product from Universal Analytics, and as a result, there has been a steep learning curve for those of us familiar with “the old way”.

However, that learning curve is more than worth it once you realize how much of a leap forward GA4 is in the modern analytics landscape. It presents an opportunity for brands and agencies to be better informed, more privacy-conscious, and ultimately make better and faster decisions based on the advanced features offered by GA4.

In this series, we have covered:

How to set up events for tracking GA4 conversions (GA4 data collection), then we looked at how to customize reports in GA4 (native GA4 reporting) to make them more meaningful for your business, in turn helping you quickly find the data you need to make good decisions. And most recently, we moved beyond the GA4 interface to look at building GA4 reports in Swydo (exporting GA4 data to use elsewhere).

To wrap up the series, it’s worth recapping the current timeline for Universal Analytics and covering a few things that have changed in GA4 since we started this series.

We’ve also tackled some of your most common GA4 questions in this recent webinar with Measurelab and Swydo experts you might want to check out.

GA4 Timeline

Now two terms are being used that are important in terms of the timeline; sunset and turndown. Sunset refers to the point when new data will stop being processed, and turndown refers to when all users will lose access entirely to the Universal Analytics platform.

Sunset for standard (i.e., free) Universal Analytics properties is on July 1, 2023.

For 360 (i.e., paid) Universal properties, with a current order, this is extended to  July 1, 2024. 360 Universal properties without a current order will not receive the extension and will stop processing data on July 1, 2023 (the same as Standard Universal).

​​Turndown is the same date for standard and 360 properties. Everyone will lose access to the Universal Analytics user interface on July 1, 2024.

For Standard UA properties, between the date of sunset and the platform turndown (so July 1, 2023, to July 1, 2024), you will still have your existing access roles and be able to query historical data and reports in the user interface. You will also be able to export your data.

This timeline still leaves plenty of time to export historical Universal Analytics data if you need to, but as mentioned in the very first article in this series, we advise you to consider how much historical data will actively be used and for which purposes. Exporting and storing all your historical data will involve some effort, so this shouldn’t be done just for the sake of keeping it.

Top 6 Updates You Should Know About Google Analytics 4

GA4 will also continue to evolve as Google invests further into this technology. In the time since starting this series there have been many updates, including the following highlights:

• The long-awaited introduction of custom channel groups 🙌
• Item-scoped custom dimensions.
• The ability to modify and create events using regular expressions.
• Making data-driven attribution (DDA) the default – first-click, linear, time-decay, and position-based models will be removed from September.
• Introducing a counting method setting for conversion events, allowing you to choose either once per event (recommended) or once per session (legacy).
• New custom funnel reports, allowing you to define your own funnels and measure how many users drop off between steps. Also, a new user purchase journey report, showing drop-off between each step in your purchase funnel, from starting a new session to completing a purchase.

We’re really excited here at Measurelab about GA4 and we hope that this series has helped you to feel excited about it too. There was a lot of confusion and uncertainty when the news initially broke that Universal Analytics would be going away but the pace of change with GA4 combined with the fact it is purpose-built for modern analytics requirements (privacy conscious, suitable for web and app, leverages machine learning and uses a flexible, event-based data model) make it a powerful tool for marketers and agencies alike.

As a final sign-off on this series, just two more suggestions to help you carry on your GA4 learning journey and stay on top of updates.

Final Thoughts and Resources

Firstly, we’ve mentioned our own Measurelab GA4 immersion cohort training throughout this series and we truly believe this is the best way to learn GA4 in detail. This course is run over 6 weeks, with a mixture of videos and other training materials to consume in your own time along with a live session every week. This format allows you to digest and practice the learning material between sessions and also to learn alongside – and from – the other peers in your cohort. Swydo customers can avail of our special offer of 10% off each ticket with the code ‘SWYDO10’.

We recently conducted a webinar with Swydo on Google Analytics 4 Reporting Simplified. It offers expert insights on what we think the transition entails and answers some of the common GA4 questions.

We would also recommend you bookmark the resources included in our analytics resource round-up. This list includes community forums, official Google help guides, social media groups and individuals to follow as well as our recommended podcasts and industry events.

Good luck on your journey forward with GA4 and if you would like independent analytics advice at any stage, please reach out to us at hello@measurelab.co.uk.

Dara is the CEO of Measurelab. He has specialized in Google Analytics for the last 15 years, consulting clients, running training courses, and speaking at industry events. His mission now is to make Measurelab the world’s favorite digital analytics consultancy and the all-time greatest place to work (for analytics types).

Kernwoorden: GA4, GA4 Reporting

In this fourth part of our Demystifying Google Analytics 4 series, we move beyond the GA4 interface to look at how you can use your Google Analytics (GA4) data within the Swydo platform. With only months left now before Universal Analytics stops collecting data, getting to grips with GA4 is essential. So why not take advantage of our special offer to all Swydo customers for 10% off each ticket with code ‘SWYDO10’ on our 6-week GA4 Immersion course?

So far in this series, we have focussed solely on working within GA4. We covered how to set up events for tracking GA4 conversions, and then in the previous post, we showed how to customize reports in GA4 to make them more meaningful for your business, which in turn helps you quickly find the data you need to make good decisions. 

Now it’s time to move beyond the GA4 interface and look at how to work with your GA4 data within the Swydo platform. 

Let’s do this step-by-step.

Crafting GA4 Reports Using Swydo

If you haven’t done so before, it’s quick and easy to connect to your GA4 data within your Swydo account. First, click the “+ New report” button.

This will bring up the report template gallery.

You have two choices here, you can either create a report from scratch (using the “New blank report”) option, or you can use an existing template, e.g., the “Google Analytics 4 report” template. This template is an excellent kickstarter if you’re not sure exactly what you want to include. It can be hard working from a blank canvas, so using the GA4 template gives you something to look at and then add, edit, and remove as you see fit to tailor the report to your specific needs.    

However, for the purposes of this article we will start with a blank canvas and run through building a report that shows the performance of some of the events we covered previously.

After clicking “New blank report”, we then need to choose a client for this report to sit under.

We then need to choose our data source, so click the “+ New data source” button.

Scroll down to Google Analytics 4 in the integrations list and then click “+ Connect new account”.  

Then click “Connect Google Analytics 4”.

You then need to go through the Google authentication/approval process to allow Swydo to connect to your GA4 data. Once you have done this, you will see your new data source ready to use to create your own GA4 report.

At first, you will see this blank report screen, ready for you to add your widgets and KPIs to visualize the GA4 data you are most interested in.

Working with GA4 data in Swydo

For this article, I will use our Measurelab data to demonstrate and the report I will build will focus on the training section of our website.

I want to include some high-level metrics (users and pageviews) as well as some macro and micro-conversions (training bookings – our KPI – and enquiry form submissions, video plays, etc. – micro-conversions) and then break these down by some common GA4 dimensions for a more granular view of performance.

So let’s start by making a scorecard to show the high-level metrics. Click the blue “+” button and then select “KPI” from the options.  

I then need to select the data source I connected to earlier.

Then I search for and select “Users” in the list.

Adding filters to GA4 reports

In my case, I only want users that viewed training pages on our site so I need to add a filter in the widget settings.

In this case, I add a filter on the “Page path” dimension to only include pages on our website in the training section. 

I then repeat this process for all the other metrics I want to show in my scorecard and I end up with this view.

The users and page view widgets both need the filter I showed above to ensure it’s only including those who visit the training section of our website. 

The training form enquiry metric is using one of GA4’s enhanced measurement events (which are automatically tracked), called form_submit. The metric used in this widget is “Event count,” and the filter is based on “Event name” including form_submit. 

The start checkout, training bookings and live chats initiated metrics are all using manually created events (begin_checkout, purchase and live_chat respectively). In other words, these events were configured manually using Google Tag Manager, as opposed to the automatically collected events which require no manual implementation. 

The same approach can be used for any events you are tracking in GA4 and as mentioned in our previous event tracking article it doesn’t actually matter which method you used to create the events – within a reporting context they are all the same. So you can create various different widgets using combinations of the events you are tracking along with the different dimensions available in GA4 to break this data down further for more meaningful analysis. 

To give some examples of this, I will build out this dashboard a little further to wrap up this article. 

Choosing the correct data visualization

Given the KPI for this dashboard is successful training course bookings, I will first look at purchases by day, split by the users first marketing channel. 

First I create a new widget, just as before, but this time in the widget editor I will set the presentation visual to “Column chart”.

In the Dimensions & Metrics tab I choose “Day” as the primary dimension, with “First user default channel grouping” as the breakdown dimension and the metric I want is “Event count”.

I then need to create a filter so this widget will only report on purchases. Otherwise, we would see the total event count for all events tracked. So in the Filter tab, I create a filter for “Event name” includes “purchase”.

The resulting Column chart looks like this.

Another enhancement measurement event (automatically tracked in GA4 when enabled) is page scroll. The event named “scroll” triggers each time a user scrolls to 90% of the page depth. So to see how engaged users are with our training pages I will create a widget that looks at 90% scroll by page path. 

This time I choose “Bar chart” as the visual in the Presentation tab of the widget editor, then select “Page path” as the dimension and “Event count” as the metric in the Dimensions & Metrics tab. Then on the filter tab, I need two separate filters this time. First I need to include the “scroll” event only and secondly, I need to include training pages only. 

I click “Save settings” and the resulting bar chart looks like this.

We also have an embedded YouTube video on our main training page and this is tracked using another enhanced measurement event. Any embedded videos that have JS API support enabled will automatically track video_start, video_progress and video_complete events in GA4. In this case I want to include both video_start and video_complete and I want to see this broken down by the marketing channel for the session where the video was interacted with. 

For this widget I will select a “Heatmap” visual on the Presentation tab of the widget editor. On the Dimensions & Metrics tab I need to select “Session default channel grouping” as the Primary dimension, with “Event name” as the Breakdown dimension. This is because we want to see both video_start and video_complete events. Then I select “Event count” as the metric.  

On the Filter tab I need two filters again, one to include the video_start and video_complete events only and another to include the main training page (/training/) only.

I click “Save settings” and here is my Heatmap widget showing video interactions by session channel.

One final widget I will add to this dashboard is to show training enquiry form submissions by city. 

For this widget I would like to visualise it on a map so I will select “Bubblemap” on the Presentation tab. Then on the Dimensions & Metrics tab, I select “City” as the Location dimension and “Event count” as the metric.

And on the Filter tab I need to create a filter on the “Event name” to include the event form_submit.

This is yet another (automatically tracked) enhanced measurement event in GA4, which triggers each time a form is submitted on your website. Note: It is always advisable to check any enhanced measurement events you are using to ensure they work correctly on your specific website. 

This is the resulting “Bubblemap” widget showing enquiry form submissions by city. 

There is obviously a lot more you can do within the Swydo platform itself, including adding additional data sources to your reports so you can measure KPI performance across all of your marketing activity, not just web and app analytics data. Hopefully, this article showed you how easy it is to start building out reports in Swydo using your GA4 data. 

In the next and final article in this series, we will recap what we have covered so far on demystifying GA4, as well as updating you on the GA4 changes since we started this series and finally give you some of our key tips and takeaways to make the most of what GA4 has to offer. You may also want to check out this recorded webinar from Measurelab and Swydo experts on frequently asked GA4 questions.      

Dara is the CEO of Measurelab. He has specialized in Google Analytics for the last 15 years, consulting clients, running training courses, and speaking at industry events. His mission now is to make Measurelab the world’s favorite digital analytics consultancy and the all-time greatest place to work (for analytics types).

Kernwoorden: GA4, GA4 Reporting

In this third part of our Demystifying Google Analytics 4 series, we discuss the GA4 reporting interface and how to make the GA4 UI your own. Yes, it also explains how you can replicate many of your favorite Universal Analytics (UA) reports in GA4.

With only months before Universal Analytics stops collecting data, getting to grips with GA4 is essential. So why not take advantage of our special offer to all Swydo customers for 10% off each ticket with code ‘SWYDO10’ on our 6-week GA4 Immersion course.

In the previous article in this series, we discussed how to collect data with GA4 using the different event types and how these can be marked as conversions to report performance against.

So in this article, we will dive into the GA4 reporting interface, showing you some different customization options you can use to tailor the presentation of the data you are collecting to suit your own reporting requirements.

Then in the final two articles we will discuss the following:

Part 4 – GA4 and Swydo: How to get the data you need in the place you need it

Part 5 – What’s next? Get the answers to what the future holds, what do you need to do, and when

You may also want to check out the recording of our recent Measurelabs/Swydo joint webinar exploring the most common GA4 questions marketers have.

Back to the GA4 reporting interface, the reports workspace in GA4 is highly usable right out of the box and you can read more about this in our Measurelab blog posts Understanding and using GA4’s default reports and How to use the real-time report in GA4.

However, one of the main benefits of the GA4 reporting interface is how highly customizable it is and that will be our focus in this article.

You can edit the overview and detail reports, as well as the reports navigation menu, and even add your own reporting collections and topics.

Important notes: 

• You need to be an editor or administrator to make report customizations
• You can undo any report customizations you make
• Everyone with access will see your customizations

Let’s do this step-by-step.

Overview and detail reports

You can edit any existing report in GA4 by simply clicking on the “Customize Report” button in the top right corner (the pencil icon).

This will bring up the report editor panel on the right-hand side of the report.

Within this report editor panel, you can remove existing reporting cards (each block of data in the report), reposition them, and add new ones – up to a maximum of 16 cards per report.

The default reports are standard across all GA4 properties so they are likely to include some data that won’t be relevant to your business. In the example above for the Acquisition overview report, one of the default cards included is for Google Ads traffic. This particular website does not advertise with Google Ads so this reporting card could be removed as it will never show any data. We could also add in Conversions by Default Channel Grouping.

Once you are happy with your changes you just need to click “Save” and view your newly customized overview report.

Editing detail reports is very similar so let’s take the example of the “Tech Details” page shown below. Again click the pencil icon in the top right corner.

This will open up the report editor panel.

It’s the same report editor panel that we saw with an overview report but this time we have a few more customization options.

For the two charts shown on the page, we can change the chart type between bar, scatter and line. If you think this is limited, bear in mind this is not dashboard building (like you can do more comprehensively in Google Looker Studio) but simply editing some existing interface reports. You can also hide one or both of the charts and reorder them (left or right) if you wish. You can also change the dimension used in the charts by clicking on the Dimensions list and then choosing a different default dimension, as shown below.

Whichever dimension is set to default in this list will also be the primary dimension in the report table.

Whereas clicking into the metrics list will allow you to control which metrics are shown in this table. You can remove existing metrics, add new ones and reorder the list to suit your preference. In this example, there is no revenue being collected as this is not an E-commerce business so the “Total Revenue” metric could be removed from this report.

One other customization you can make to the detail reports in GA4 is to save a custom report filter to show only a subset of the overall data to users of this report. A good example would be to filter to include only web data if you are collecting both web and app data into your GA4 property (or vice versa). The screenshot below shows how you would configure this report filter only to include web data.

Customize the navigation menu for the reports workspace

So far, we have shown how to edit the reports themselves, customizing the dimensions, metrics, and charts shown to users of the reports. Now we will zoom out a level and look at customizing the navigation menu for the reports workspace.

By default, we see the menu below when we click into the reports workspace.

We have two default reports, “Collections”: Life cycle and User, and within each of these, we have “Topics” (e.g., Acquisition) and Reports (e.g., Traffic acquisition). We can edit the existing Collections, Topics, and Reports included by default as well as add new ones by clicking into the Library (link at the bottom of the menu).

If we are not collecting any revenue data, then we might want to remove the Monetisation “Topic” from the Life cycle “Collection”. To do this, we would click on the blue “Edit Collection” link at the bottom of the Life cycle “Collection” card.

Then scroll down to find the Monetisation “Topic” and click the “x” icon to “Remove Topic”.

This will then remove that Topic from the menu for all users of this GA4 property.

You can also build new Collections entirely from scratch if you wish, or start them from a template.

You can even use emojis in your new Collection and Topic names if you’re feeling brave! 🤯

Replicating your favorite UA reports in GA4

As we’ve shown in this article, the reporting interface in GA4, which is useful even by default, can be fine-tuned through the different customization options to present the data you’re collecting in GA4 in a way that suits you and your fellow report users. We hear a lot of people say the GA4 interface is lacking compared to Universal Analytics but in reality, much of the same reporting data is there; it’s just a simplified User Interface. You can replicate many of your favorite reports by simply changing the primary dimension in any of the detail reports in GA4.

For example, in Universal Analytics, there are separate reports for Browser & OS and Device Categories, as shown below.

Whereas GA4 simplifies this by containing the same combined data in a single report, “Tech Details”. This defaults to the primary dimension of “Browser”:

You can then change with the primary dimension drop-down to show your device categories without needing to navigate to a different report:

And of course, as we’ve shown, you can then customize these detail reports to present the dimensions and metrics that are most relevant to you.

We hope this guide helps you tailor your own GA4 reports to make them more meaningful for your business, which in turn will save you time finding the data you need to act on. In the next article, we will move on to looking at GA4 data in Swydo.

Track your GA4 data with Swydo

Connect your Google Analytics 4 account to Swydo, you can include GA4 metrics with data from 30+ other marketing channels to get a comprehensive look at your marketing efforts in one automated report or dashboard. Sign up for a free 14-day trial or schedule a walkthrough.

Dara is the CEO of Measurelab. He has specialized in Google Analytics for the last 15 years, consulting clients, running training courses, and speaking at industry events. His mission now is to make Measurelab the world’s favorite digital analytics consultancy and the all-time greatest place to work (for analytics types).

Kernwoorden: GA4, GA4 Reporting

In the second part of our Demystifying Google Analytics 4 series, we are talking about GA4 events. With only months left now before Universal Analytics stops collecting data, getting to grips with GA4 is essential. So why not take advantage of our special offer to all Swydo customers for 50% off each ticket with code ‘SWYDO50’ on our 6-week GA4 Immersion course.

In the first article of this series, we mentioned that GA4 uses a much improved event-based data collection model and features both automatic event tracking (enhanced measurement for web) and event editing and creation (customized events).

In this article, we will dive deeper into these concepts, covering the new data model, comparing it to Universal Analytics (UA), and explaining the different event types in GA4 with examples. We will also cover conversions in GA4, again comparing to UA for reference.

What is the GA4 data model and why is it all built on events? This will be a core part of the series. We will explain the different types of events, with plenty of examples. And how conversions fit in (with comparisons against UA).

In the coming editions we will discuss:

Part 3 –  Reporting and the library: how to make the GA4 UI your own

Part 4 – GA4 and Swydo: How to get the data you need in the place you need it

Part 5 – What next? What the future holds, what do you need to do, and when

We’ve also recorded a joint Measurelab and Swydo webinar exploring marketers’ most common GA4 questions.

Let’s do this together!

Data Collection Model

Starting with the data model, Universal Analytics data is mainly collected using pageview hits and event hits. So pageviews and events are tracked separately in UA.

UA DATA MODEL

Whereas GA4 collects all data via events. Therefore, Universal Analytics property hit types translate to events in a GA4 property.

GA4 data model

Since GA4 captures all data in events, even metrics like Sessions and Pageviews are tracked using events, the session_start and page_view events to be specific. This makes life easier as it means all data is available in all reports, unlike Universal Analytics. 

There are several different ways of creating events that need to be considered when implementing GA4 for your websites and apps. To be clear, these are methods of event creation and the resulting events will all be reported in the same way, regardless of the method used. For simplicity, we will refer to these different methods of event creation as event types.

The different event types in GA4 can broadly be categorised into automatically collected, manually created, and customised events.

Automatically collected events

Automatically collected events are collected without additional implementation once you have a GA4 tag on your website or the GA for Firebase SDK in your app. These events cannot be disabled. Some examples of these events are:

• first_visit
• session_start
• user_engagement
• in_app_purchase

It’s worth noting that some automatically collected events are specific to web, Android and/or iOS Data Streams.

For websites, enhanced measurement events are collected from websites automatically when enhanced measurement is enabled within the interface. These events can be enabled and disabled and as mentioned above they are only available in web data streams.     
You can see which Enhanced Measurement events are enabled under Admin > Data Streams, then select a Web Data Stream.

You can also disable each one inside this settings panel, with the exception of the page_view event which is mandatory.

Here is the full list of the enhanced measurement events.

You should always test each enhanced measurement event you are using on your own website. Like any standardised implementation, it assumes the interaction being tracked works in a typical way and this is often not the case.

Manually created events

This event type will require some implementation via Google Tag Manager (GTM) or the Google tag (gtag.js) and will therefore need some coding and/or tagging expertise. There is a list of recommended events to use when implementing them, which unlock existing and future reporting capabilities.

A good example is for e-commerce event tracking as there is currently no Enhanced E-commerce in GA4. If you want to see transactions and revenue in the GA4 reports, you will have to use the exact event name and event parameter naming convention for the purchase event. Otherwise, the conversions and revenue metrics will not be populated in the data, although you will still be able to report on the count of events as you would expect.

Customised events

Customised events is the generic name given when events are created within the GA4 interface. You can access all of the existing (and add new) customised events by navigating to Admin and then in the Property column, click Events. Then to create a new event, click Create event.

To give an example, let’s say we want to create an event that will trigger when a specific page is viewed, so in this case the page /training/thank_you. To do this we need to create a new event that triggers on the existing pageview event but only when the page location parameter for that event contains /training/thank_you. We would configure this as shown below.

A big benefit of customised events is that they can be added and removed at any time, without needing to change or update the implementation on the apps or websites. This is especially useful for apps where any tagging changes require a new app version to be published to the app/play store.

Note: You can create up to 50 customised events at any one time per data stream.

For even further detail on the different event types, you can read our GA4 event types guide or listen to us talk through these on an episode of our podcast The Measure Pod.

Conversions

In GA4, conversions are events. Unlike goals in Universal Analytics, conversions in GA4 are simply existing events that have been marked as a conversion. Any event (regardless of which method was used to create it) can be marked as a conversion in the GA4 interface.

In the previous section we created a customised event to track when the example page /training/thank_you is viewed.

In Universal Analytics we would track this using a destination URL goal as shown below.

In GA4 we just need to mark the event we created earlier (training_checkout_complete_page) as a conversion, as shown below.

You can then view the performance of all your conversions in the dedicated Conversions report in GA4, as shown below.

Remember that conversions are simply events though, so you will also see these events that you have marked as conversions in the main Events report, alongside events not marked as conversions.

And as mentioned earlier in this article, all events are reported in the same way in the interface regardless of the method used to collect them.

To help customers who need to migrate existing Universal Analytics goals over to GA4, recreating them as conversion events, Google provides this handy [UA→GA4] Goals migration tool. This allows you to quickly recreate eligible goals from your connected Universal Analytics property as conversion events in your GA4 property.

This can be a useful tool but our recommendation is to take this opportunity to review the data you have been collecting in Universal and consider if you need to recreate all of this in GA4. If you need help reviewing your measurement requirements and ensuring you get the most out of GA4 then Measurelab can help. And with only months left now before Universal Analytics stops collecting data, getting to grips with GA4 is essential. So why not take advantage of our special offer to all Swydo customers for 50% off each ticket with code ‘SWYDO50’ on our 6-week GA4 Immersion course.

In the next article in this series, we will take you through how to use the different reports available in GA4, and how to customize them to suit your business requirements.

Track your GA4 data with Swydo

Connect your Google Analytics 4 account to Swydo, you can include GA4 metrics with data from 30+ other marketing channels to get a comprehensive look at your marketing efforts in one automated report or dashboard. Sign up for a free 14-day trial or schedule a walkthrough.

Dara is the CEO of Measurelab. He has specialized in Google Analytics for the last 15 years; consulting clients, running training courses, and speaking at industry events. His mission now is to make Measurelab the world’s favorite digital analytics consultancy and the all-time greatest place to work (for analytics types).

Kernwoorden: GA4, GA4 Reporting

In the coming months, we will be publishing a series of blog articles documenting the GA4 transition process. Continue reading for a special training deal for Swydo customers!

Time is running out for Universal Analytics (UA). Google Analytics 4 (or just GA4) is Google’s next-generation measurement solution and is replacing Universal Analytics entirely. In this blog series, we aim to show you that this is not a reason to panic. We believe GA4 is a major shift in the right direction, a sign of real progress, and therefore an opportunity for marketers to be better informed and make better decisions, based on the features offered by GA4.

We’ll start with this overview, a lay of the land if you will. And in the subsequent posts in the series, we will dive a little deeper – with practical advice and examples – to help you migrate confidently to GA4 and start using it to its full potential.

In the meantime, and without wanting to give too many spoilers, here’s the topline for what you can expect from the following posts in this 5-part series:

Part 2 – Events, events, events!

What is the Google Analytics 4 data model and why is it all built on events? This will be a core part of the series. We will explain the different types of events, with plenty of examples. And how conversions fit in (with comparisons against UA).

Part 3 –  Reporting and the library: how to make the GA4 UI your own

See how to use the different reports available in GA4, and how to customize GA4 reports to your business requirements. We’ll even cover how to change the reports menu within the GA4 interface.

Part 4 – GA4 and Swydo: how to get the data you need in the place you need it

This will nicely follow the previous post, which talked about report customization within GA4, covering how to get the data out of Google Analytics 4 and into the Swydo platform.

Part 5 – What next? What the future holds, what you need to do and when

We will go deeper into what all this means, and what needs to be done to finalize a migration to GA4. This will also allow us to cover any common frequently asked questions that might have arisen from the previous 4.

With this blog series we hope to cover the most commonly required of these new features, with practical examples, but GA4 is a powerful, new tool and we appreciate there is a lot to learn. To gain complete confidence in using GA4 to its full potential, knowing both its limitations and its differences from UA, we recommend registering your interest for our 6-week Google Analytics 4 Immersion training course at a special price for Swydo customers.

Why there is no reason to panic

The fact is Google’s timeline for the sunsetting of UA has left many businesses feeling panicked. It’s worth noting that this is the first time Google has made a change to GA that results in historical data becoming unavailable. There are many GA accounts in use that will have data from urchin, classic GA and Universal, all in the same property.

GA4 timeline to keep in mind

First some straightforward facts. Data will stop being collected for standard, i.e. free, UA properties on July 1, 2023. Then you will have until July 1, 2024 to access your historical data in UA. After July 1, 2024, you’ll no longer be able to see your UA reports in the GA interface or access any UA data via the API.

Saving your historical data

For this reason, Google strongly recommends exporting your historical reports during the 6-month window from July 1, 2023 (if not before). However, we would advise you to consider how much historical data will actively be used and for which purposes. Exporting and storing all your historical data will involve some effort so this shouldn’t be done just for the sake of keeping it.

A one-off extension was recently announced for 360 UA properties. Data will continue to be collected until July 1, 2024. We talked about this extension on a recent episode of our podcast: The Measure Pod: The inevitable… Google postpones sunsetting GA360. GA 360 UA properties will also lose access to historical data effect July 1, 2024.

Time for a quick reality check. For those of us wishing to continue using GA as our primary marketing analytics tool, we have no choice but to move wholesale to GA4. In return, you get a rich feature set including machine learning-based behavioral and predictive modeling, a free export of your GA4 data to BigQuery for data warehousing and larger analysis projects, and a much improved event-based data collection model.

The five-step framework you can follow

At Measurelab we have developed our own five-step framework for migrating to GA4, which you can read more about on our blog here: PIVOT framework, and/or listen to us talk about it on our podcast here: The Measure Pod: The GA4 PIVOT framework). The PIVOT framework (standing for Plan, Implement, Validate, Onboard, Transform) can help you regardless of what stage you are at currently in your adoption of GA4.

GA4 and BigQuery

For all existing GA4 properties you have, we strongly recommend setting up the free connector to Google BigQuery right away as there is no backfill option if you do this further down the line (unlike with the BigQuery connector for GA360, which backfilled 13 months). If you are not already aware of the benefits, you can read our article 10 reasons to export your GA4 data to BigQuery.

Aside from the free BigQuery connector for all GA4 accounts, there is a goody bag of new features introduced with GA4 that we believe should get you as excited as we are. These include:

• Automatic event tracking (enhanced measurement) and event editing and creation (customized events), all of which we will cover in the next post 
• Machine learning models, which you can learn more about from Measurelab’s Daniel Perry-Reed: GA4 machine learning made easy?
  • These models both supplement the observed data collected by GA and also predict future behavior. 
  • A particularly impressive use of this is for modeling non-consenting users, with behavior modeling for consent mode. We covered this topic in more detail on our podcast: The Measure Pod: Consent Mode and behavioral modeling in GA4.  
• A customizable UI, which we will touch on in a later post
• You can build custom funnels with up to 10 steps, and even see the average time elapsed between steps
• Free connectors to SA360, DV360, CM360 (which was previously for GA360 only)

However, you will also have to say goodbye to some of the features you may be familiar with from Universal Analytics, including

• Site speed metrics (not a big loss in our view, as there are better tools for this)
• Some of the basic/standard e-commerce reports and funnels
• Session-level custom dimensions and also custom metrics
• And of course, Views! (which is a pain but not a dealbreaker)

Let’s do this together! 

Track your GA4 data with Swydo 

Track your GA4 data with Swydo. Once you’ve connected your Google Analytics 4 account to Swydo, you can include essential GA4 metrics with data from 30+ other marketing channels to get a comprehensive look at your marketing efforts in one automated report or dashboard. Set up your free 14-day trial, and start building your first GA4 report today! Need help? Visit Swydo’s help center, contact them through in-app text, or email support@swydo.com. Or schedule a walkthrough.

Dara is CEO of Measurelab. He has specialized in Google Analytics for the last 15 years; consulting clients, running training courses and speaking at industry events. His mission now is to make Measurelab the world’s favorite digital analytics consultancy and the all-time greatest place to work (for analytics types).

Kernwoorden: GA4, GA4 Reporting