Start Working with Google Analytics 4 (GA4) Now
I am writing this article on 20 December 2022 and Google is ending the current free version of Google Analytics (I’m calling that version GA-UA in this article) on 1 July 2023. This means that your GA-UA account will no longer record information from that date and the historical data will also be removed at some point after this date (Google has not specified that date yet).
This article does not contain instructions to configure GA4. There are many helpful articles online and the GA4 interface is changing often so any article is in danger of being out of date within a month.
Why should I install GA4 now?
There is no upgrade of a GA-UA property to GA4. GA4 will not include your analytics data from GA-UA.
The sooner that GA4 on your website is operational, the sooner it can be recording historical data for you. If you didn’t install GA4 by 1 July 2022, you will already have an issue from July 2023 in that GA4 will have no tracking data from July 2022 so you cannot make any comparisons year-on-year. In addition, there are a few steps to configuring GA4 to your requirements and so you will need to run it and refine it for a month or three.
Why is GA4 so different to GA-UA?
GA-UA is made up of page views and events formed into a session.
GA4 is only events. So a page view of a website is recorded as an event of type page_view.
GA-UA events have Event Category, Event Action and Event Label defined within the Event and all of this data is automatically stored in GA-UA. GA4 events can have multiple parameters sent with the event but these will not be available in GA4 until you have created custom dimensions.
GA-UA is structured as a property with multiple views of that property.
GA4 is a property with a single view (free version of GA4) but multiple data streams connected to that property. This enables you to send data from multiple websites or apps into a single property.
The images below show the Home screen for GA4 and for GA-UA.
The majority of companies have one website and one GA-UA property.
If this is your company, then you will create a single GA4 property and connect a single datastream.
What if your website has GA-UA events configured in Google Tag Manager?
In this case, you will need to reconfigure all of those events to be sent to a GA4 data stream. The good news is that you can retain all of the triggers and just create GA4 events (while still retaining the GA-UA events).
Some good things about GA4 - Funnel Explorations
Funnel explorations are a lot better than GA-UA. You can mix up page views and events (in GA-UA you were forced to use page views). Also you don’t have to link a funnel to a conversion, the conclusion of the funnel can be anything that you define.
The example below is a funnel of passage through a popular content page, engaging with that page (time spent and scroll), clicking a CTA to a product page and then downloading a PDF.
Even for non-eCommerce sites, it is possible to quickly and easily build multiple funnels of the popular paths through the website to see if users are being driven to your higher-value pages.
Some good things about GA4 - Flexible Reporting
The reporting within GA4 is much more flexible than GA3 and you can easily take a standard report and customise it or build a custom report quickly with drag and drop.
You can use the Explore area of GA4 to build up a library of useful reports that can be shared with colleagues.
GA4 Engagement Rate & Bounce Rate
The GA4 Engagement Rate is the percentage of Engaged Sessions - the higher the percentage the better (as opposed to the GA-UA bounce rate where a lower percentage was preferable).
An engaged session is one that meets any of these 3 requirements
Stayed on the page with the window active for 10 or more seconds (10 seconds is the default - within GA4 admin you can adjust the threshold to 20, 30, 40, 50 or 60 seconds) OR
Visited 2 or more pages OR
Triggered a conversion event.
GA4 has recently re-introduced Bounce Rate but has redefined what it means. A bounced session is defined in GA4 as a non-engaged session - so it is effectively the inverse of the GA Engagement Rate. If you Engagement Rate is 58.43% then your Bounce Rate is 41.57%. As such the Bounce Rate in itself is a fairly pointless metric as can be seen from the table below. Engagement Rate and Bounce Rate always adds up to 100% - the one you use will depend on whether you are a “glass half full” or “glass half empty” sort of person!
If you need assistance with moving over to Google Analytics 4, please contact Cucumber. We have already moved quite a few clients to GA4 and so we know many of the pitfalls and how to avoid them.
