Seven Reasons to Give Google Analytics 4 a Chance
While Google announced last month that the current version of its long-running analytics platform — Google Analytics 4 (GA4) — has replaced the previous version (Universal Analytics, or UA), business leaders and marketers still have a bit more time to get familiar with the current GA4 platform. The Google article linked above says in bold, right at the top, that customers won't lose access to the UA interface until July 1, 2024.
Yet, even with a window of platform overlap — providing time for the analytics community to get accustomed to GA4 — many in the community are up in arms with the user interface and usability of GA4 compared with UA.
For example, check out the vitriol being thrown GA4’s way on X (formerly Twitter) on a daily basis. I’ve also noticed an increase in posts on LinkedIn that are critical of GA4.
When we tie this to a Google Trends search, is it just me, or is this negative user feedback affecting searches for GA4? Look how searches for it are projected to tank between March 23 and March 30, 2024:
Google Trends search for “ga4” for range 1/1/2024 - 3/30/2024, conducted 3/23/2024
You’ve heard of growing pains? GA4 adoption is undergoing learning pains.
I get it. It’s annoying to learn what looks like an entirely new program.
Yet, if you come to GA4 without the experience of using UA, picking it up is likely to be a pleasant experience for most users.
Here is why you should ignore the GA4 haters and give it a chance.
Compared to UA, you’re greeted with a more modern, inviting interface that has more date range options and is more intuitive when it comes to customizing and sharing reports.
You get more data snippets in the Reports snapshot (the default view when you click on Reports from the main menu).
There are more event types by default in the Events report. Events are the actions that visitors take on your website — everything from page views and scrolls to clicks and file downloads. In GA4, there are fewer instances where you need to use Google Tag Manager to customize events in order to show the common event types that a business leader, marketing director, or marketing agency is looking for.
You gain the ability to fully customize conversion events in the Events report by using Google Tag Manager in tandem with GA4. This is what we provide for marketing agency clients and other businesses.
There’s deeper integration and more granular reporting in conjunction with Google Ads. This is especially important since Google Ads is the biggest pay per click (PPC) platform in the world.
Like UA, GA4 includes the ability to exclude data from IP addresses — ie, your employees — so that the data you view is for customers/clients and potential customers/clients only. This is a big advantage over analytics dashboards built into some of the top website management platforms, such as Squarespace and Wix.
The new Explore section contains both many varied report templates, and an interface that allows you to highly customize any report with the dimensions and metrics that are most important to your business goals.
Since you get all this and more for free, it’s a no-brainer to try GA4 before you take the step of paying for a different analytics solution.
Make GA4’s powerful Events report work for your business
After hearing my pitch on a recent discovery call, a potential client aptly described our website conversion tracking service as “bringing the value of analytics to life.” Go here to learn about how we can help you better measure the value of each of your website call-to-action conversions — and ultimately improve your understanding of marketing spend ROI.
