You’ve likely seen it: GA4. The emails and the blog posts telling you GA4 is coming, and that you need to prepare. The good thing is we’ve been planning for the change to Google Analytics 4, and are doing the work to make sure your analytics are migrated before that looming July 1st deadline.
What This Means For You
GA4 is the newest iteration of Google Analytics, and will be replacing the third major release, Universal Analytics. This change is intended to address increasing pressure over data privacy and to meet GDPR and CCPA compliance requirements. These changes generally benefit user privacy, but there are also some additions that offer new options for viewing web traffic, including the ability to view customer engagement and behavior across devices when signed in (mobile, apps, and desktop). In the past, Universal Analytics only tracked websites.
In addition, GA4 also allows us to better target audiences based on specific actions taken on a website, and those audiences can be defined and targeted directly through Google Ads. This provides an opportunity to retarget audiences based on clicks, scrolls and engagements with increased accuracy.
What This Means for TruNorth
We are in the process of moving data out of Universal Analytics and into GA4 to ensure continuity throughout this change in Google’s offerings. This involves extensive setup, including new website tracking and data collection within those GA4 accounts, and we may have questions and need additional access to your website properties as we move forward through this migration.
Each GA4 account will require individual customization of reporting structures that were previously available through Universal Analytics, and new methods to capture data that was built in before. We will be building analytics and reporting to show us as much data we are used to seeing as possible, but GA4’s offerings are different and will at times limit the data available to us.
While GA4 and Universal Analytics do not have the same offerings of data, we will continue to share the data behind the services we provide. As we move forward, the types of data we share will likely change, and we will guide you through that process. At the end of the day, we will continue to share the insights of your data to benefit your business, just as you’ve come to expect from us here at TruNorth Advisors.
We know you trust us with your business, and we take that responsibility to heart. As we continue forward, you can rest assured we will guide you through every step of these changes.
If you have any questions, we’re here to talk through and advise on this change to how website traffic and engagement is measured by Google. We are committed to ensuring a smooth transition to GA4, and as we examine the data beyond.