For all those who are now afraid that their tracking will no longer work properly, we can give the all-clear straight away: Google will continue to let us work with the familiar Universal Analytics. Nevertheless, it makes sense to get to grips with Google Analytics 4 now.
Why you should start thinking about switching to GA4 today
Universal Analytics (or now Google Analytics 3) can still be used as usual. However, the last days have begun. Google will cease further development with immediate effect and will NOT publish any more updates. All efforts will now be focussed on the further development of the new Analytics 4.
Also, your old data cannot be exported to the new Analytics 4 property. This means that you should start collecting data in Analytics 4 early in order to be able to make date comparisons later on.
Why you should keep your old Universal Analytics property for the time being
The farewell to Universal Analytics is certain. Nevertheless, you should not focus all your attention on Analytics 4 now. Google may have removed the beta from the name, but Analytics 4 is still a long way from being "production ready".
New functions are being added every day. However, some already familiar functions from Universal Analytics are still missing completely, which is still an obstacle to general use. Google will certainly make improvements here in the near future, but until then we prefer to rely on our familiar reports from Google Analytics 3.
What will change for you in your website tracking: User at the centre
Events and conversions in particular have been fundamentally revised by Google and cannot/should not simply be adopted by Universal Analytics. Sessions are no longer at the centre of the tracking concept. Instead, the user and their interactions on your website now take centre stage.
It therefore makes sense that page views are now also collected as separate events. The familiar parameters event category, event action and event label have been replaced by event name, event parameters and user properties. A much larger number of variables can now be transferred to an event, which enables us to record interactions in a more generalised way and then assign them later at report level.
What new analysis options does Analytics 4 offer?
There is now a brand new option to create completely customised reports and funnel analyses. Under "Analyses" -> "Hub of the analysis tool" you will already find lots of templates that you can use to better understand your website visitors. If this is not enough for you, you can now compile reports from scratch. We will be happy to help you with any questions you may have about reporting and customer analyses. Our blog post, which introduces you to the seven most important KPIs in digital marketing, gives you an initial indication of which metrics you need to pay attention to:
https://www.towa-digital.com/blog/sieben-metriken-um-digitalen-erfolg-zu-messen/
What the new debug mode is all about
Debug mode is perhaps one of the most exciting new features of Analytics 4. It allows us to track all events and interactions that are carried out with preview mode open in real time. This means that we can now debug the correct functioning of the various events and triggers even better and more precisely. This gives us the certainty that your data is being recorded correctly and you can understand how it works even better.
Analytics and data protection
The terms GDPR and analytics or Google don't really want to harmonise. Since the introduction of the GDPR, there have been far-reaching discussions and countless blog posts dealing with the topic of GDPR-compliant tracking.
We have also been working intensively on this topic in order to be able to offer our customers data protection-compliant solutions. Google is now promising to address this issue. On the one hand, machine learning should make it possible to anticipate "missing data" and, on the other, to use Analytics 4 completely without cookies. Although this does not automatically make every tracking setup GDPR-compliant, we see this as a step in the right direction.
It should be noted that data protection-compliant tracking is still associated with manual adjustments and will continue to be a major issue when implementing tracking setups.
The most important new features at a glance
1. data can now be tracked across platforms
2. GA3 data cannot be imported into Analytics4
3. there are now automatically generated events
4. events can be split up in Google Analytics
5. machine learning helps us to understand the customer and "fill in" missing data
6. new reports and analysis options
What happens now
Analytics 4 is the future of web tracking. Google releases updates and new functions almost daily, so it is advisable to switch over early and adapt your tracking setup accordingly in order to be ready for day X, when Google will switch off Universal Analytics. Although this will not happen in the next few months, such a radical changeover should not be underestimated and will take time.
It is also worth reading our blog regularly to find out all about the new functions of Analytics 4
If you would like to read the official press release from Google, you will find it here: https://blog.google/products/marketingplatform/analytics/new_google_analytics/
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