Why GA4 is the Future of Web Analytics: Key Benefits and Reasons to Make the Switch Now

In October 2020, Google launched the newest version of Google Analytics 4 or GA4. From then GA4 or Google Analytics 4 became the buzzword in the industry. It holds the potent the on its powerful features. 

If you haven’t moved across to GA4 now, then you’ll want to keep reading.

Let’s know every corner of GA4 and its abilities to help you get advanced reports and analytical data. 

What is GA4?

GA4 is the future of Google Ads’ Data. It’s a complete pack of what data collection and analysis could be, bringing together everything that worked well in Universal Analytics with brand-new features designed to take advantage of the opportunities presented by big data and machine learning.

What’s in GA4 and not Universal Analytics?

The key difference is that Google built GA4 on a completely new Interface. They built Universal Analytics with the concept of sessions, which are essentially a series of page views. 

GA4, on the other hand, is built around the concept of events. Events can be anything from pageviews to clicks, form submissions, and even custom events you define yourself.

This change in architecture has a major impact. 

Like – 

1. Captured the missed data

First, it means that GA4 can collect a lot more data than Universal Analytics.

2. More capable insights

Second, it means that GA4 can give you a lot more insights into what people are doing on your site or app. 

3. Tracking at ease.

And third, it means that GA4 can be used to track just about anything— not just web traffic.

Some of its GA4 features:

Cross-platform Tracking

One of the most powerful features of GA4 is its ability to track users across devices and platforms. What will these mean to you? This way you can get a complete picture of how your users interact with your brand, whether they’re on your website, your mobile app, or both.

And this is made possible by using what’s called ‘data streams’, which are essentially different ‘views’ of your data that you can create based on certain specific criteria. For example, you could create a specific stream for only web traffic, a stream for only app traffic, or a stream for all traffic from a specific country.

The other big advantage of this is that it’s very easy to track conversions since you can see the entire journey a user takes from start to finish, regardless of what devices or any platform they’re using.

Advanced Analysis and Reporting

GA4 introduced a new Google reporting section that provides a new toolset to run advanced analysis. This data is based on whichever page or event you want. Also, with this new analysis tool, you can export your data into BigQuery for even more in-depth analysis.

Want advanced reporting access to GA4? Connect with us to know the tips and complete guidelines to help you get advanced reports of your business. 

Better insights with machine learning

Another major advantage of GA4 is its use of machine learning to help you get smarter insights. GA4 uses ‘probabilistic matching’ to stitch together data from different sources and give you a more 360 pictures of your users.

For example, let’s say you’re running a campaign on both Google Ads and on Facebook. GA4 with the use of probabilistic matching will give you a single view of how the Ad is performing on both the platforms by matching up with the data from those two campaigns.

This is just an example of how GA4’s machine learning can provide you with insights that simply wouldn’t be possible with Universal Analytics.

Improved Data model

The most important change in GA4 is how data is collected. In Universal Analytics, data was collected via tags placed on each website page. Whereas GA4 uses ‘event-based tracking’, which means that instead of only relying to pageviews, it tracks user interactions—or events—as they happen.

This gives GA4 much more flexibility and accurate data when tracking user behaviour.

For example, let’s say you have a website with a search feature. With Universal Analytics, you would track pageviews for the search results pages. But with GA4, you can track actual searches as they happen, irrespective of what page the user is on.

This event-based model also makes it possible to track user interactions that don’t necessarily happen on a web page, such as offline conversions or in-app purchases.

In short, GA4’s improved data model provides a more accurate and complete picture of how users are interacting with your website or app.

Purchase probability and churn

GA4 comes with the ability to predict purchase probability and churn. Purchase probability measures how likely a user is to purchase on your website or app. While Churn measures how likely a user is to stop using your product.

GA4 uses machine learning to predict purchase probability and churn for each individual user. This means that you can target your marketing efforts more effectively and focus on the most likely users to convert or churn. On that basis, you can then remarket your products and retarget accordingly.

Furthermore, GA4 will continue to learn and get more accurate over time. So, the more you use it, it will become more and more valuable.

Move to GA4 immediately!

As you can see, GA4 is a major upgrade from Universal Analytics. It’s more powerful, more flexible, and more accurate. 

It’s not just about marketing, the relative data to it matters equally and when you get incomplete or vague insights it’ll lead you to spend waste ultimately. So why take the risk of spending at the wrong parameter with no value in return?

Move to GA4 right now.

Not only you will get access to all the new features and capabilities, but you’ll also be able to take advantage of GA4’s continued learning and improvement to keep the tap on the latest updates. Therefore, it’s important to consider that Google will discontinue Universal Analytics in July 2023, so you’ll have to upgrade anyway.

We certainly don’t want you to risk your potential data loss.

Since UA will stop collecting new sessions very soon, moving your tracking now means you’ll have a year of historical data in your new platform, whether that’s GA4 or something else. 

It also means you won’t get a sudden jolt of data loss during your transition since you can use both at the same time until you transition fully. But ultimately, you can test the reliability of your data, so start migrating your data to GA4. 

Make your decision-making more Insightful. 

Google announced the sunset date of Universal Analytics being July 2023, we’re suggesting you run fully configured and set up GA4 analytics in parallel to your UA accounts if not done yet.  

So, are you ready to make an advanced move from UA to GA4?