Google recently announced they would sunset Universal Analytics (GA3) in 2023 and focus on Google Analytics 4 (GA4). As many sites still rely on GA3 to measure website traffic, there’s been a fair bit of concern about what this will mean. In this post, we will run through how to transition and why.
No, not at all! New features are still being added, and the list of differences seems to be ever-growing. What you will immediately notice is that the user interface is completely different. Add to that, the navigation has changed and the way reports are setup are new as well.
Plan to need some training as this is not a simple upgrade.
GA4 tracking is very much focused on events, where GA3 was focused on page views. This means you can track things like user clicks, scrolling, file downloads, but you’re going to have to update how your website is delivering the information to Google.
You also now have access to new metrics like Engaged Sessions and these come with fresh new reports.
For those of us who have focused on Goals in the past, you will find these replaced with Conversion Events. If your goals were set around page views, purchases, or file downloads, you will need to make changes to ensure the Conversion Event is tracked in GA4.
If you use Google Ads, and have a connected account, there are new ways to analyze your data with increased attention to data based attribution.
Because our friends at Exact Metrics put together a great step-by-step guide, you can click here to walk through that with some awesome visuals. This is assuming you already have a GA account. If you’re starting fresh, you can contact us, and we’d be happy to give you some advice, as it’s a bit more work to start new.
No. This is why we suggest you setup your new property now. As we hope you have a website for your podcast, it’s important to track your visitor metrics, along with your downloads.
