In today’s digital landscape, customers are engaging with your brand across various touchpoints. And with new privacy laws being enacted, tracking customer data will become more challenging. You need a cross-platform analytics solution that doesn’t rely on cookies but can still provide valuable insights.
Fortunately, Google has introduced Google Analytics 4 to replace Universal Analytics. GA4 constructs a unified customer journey across your websites and apps and provides country-level privacy controls to minimize the collection of user data. Google will be finished sunsetting Universal Analytics by July 1, 2023.
So, should you start migrating over to GA4? Here’s what you need to know.
Cross-Platform Analytics
Universal Analytics became obsolete because it was designed for measuring independent sessions of visitors primarily using desktops. This created fragmented data requiring additional products like App + Web. With GA4, all traffic sources, whether it’s mobile or desktop, are now tracked in one place.
Instead of focusing on sessions and page views like Universal Analytics, GA4 uses an event-based data model to deliver user-centric measurement. Now you can have a full picture of the user’s journey through your websites and apps.
The fitness brand Gymshark used GA4 to better understand how their customers moved through the purchase funnel. As result they:
- Cut drop-off rates by 9 per cent.
- Increased clickthroughs by 5 per cent.
- And reduced their time analyzing user journeys by 30 per cent.
Cookiepocalypse
Google is phasing out third-party cookies by 2023. Google also said it won’t be building alternative identifiers to track users as they browse the web. This removes a large source of data for brands looking for insight into their buyer persona.
GA4’s goal is to provide sophisticated cross-platform analysis while complying with the current privacy trends toward more anonymous web surfing.
One of the ways GA4 is supplementing cookies is with machine learning. Predictive analysis can anticipate user behaviour as well as purchase, churn, and revenue probability. It also automatically surfaces critical insights to plug the gaps in your visitor data.
Should You Take the Plunge?
All this sounds great, but is GA4 living up to the hype? Out of the gate, many search engine marketing professionals have complained about several issues. Some point to an unintuitive interface, which makes important data hard to access. Others believe GA4 was rushed out the door before all the bugs were worked out.
Our suggestion would be to tread carefully for now while Google addresses these issues. You still have another year to plan your migration, so take it slow and identify any potential issues you may see before making a full commitment.
Get The Cross-Platform Analytics You Need
At Pulsion, analytics and digital marketing go hand in hand. We work with Google Analytics, call tracking, social and inbound analytics, and more. With our analytics solutions, you’ll have complete transparency into the progress of your campaigns, more insight into your buyer persona’s behaviors, and the necessary data to improve customer experience.
Call us today at 1-866-554-1465 or visit our website to learn more about integrating analytics into your digital marketing.