Google Analytics 4: Do I need to migrate over from Universal?

karen Brett tutor
max, ken, and niki meeting

Do I need to migrate
from universeal?

GA4 was announced about a year ago, and it’s progressed a long way. While we still wouldn’t use it as our main source of website analytics, setting up GA4 now means you’ll start collecting data in GA4 now–and by the time you make the switchover, you’ll have some historical data to compare.

What’s most important to note is that GA4 is totally different from Universal – and in some really good ways. One, it’s totally designed around how marketers work – it’s built for our needs and to think like we think. 

  • It’s more closely integrated to GSC, which means you don’t have to leave GA4 as much to go back/forth to get what you need.
  • It’s built for data-driven attribution – you can get more granular than before about how each marketing touchpoint helped a conversion.

Secondarily, it’s built around how the user navigates so that we can better understand conversion and behavioral information.

  • Two new modeling capabilities, conversion & behavioral. This can help marketers fill in gaps in their understanding of customer behavior when cookies or other identifiers aren’t available. It enables conversion modeling in attribution reporting to better identify where the conversions are coming from. Helps put that missing piece right into the data puzzle!

 

Our perspective is that GA4 is here and while Universal is not immediately going away, it is still important for us to help our clients migrate over to it and start realizing the benefits now. Google is using it actively now and it will shape everything we rely on from Google. GA4 is designed to help illuminate where to invest and provide you with more detail as to why certain things work, and certain things don’t work.

Here’s how we can help:

GA4 Live Training 

GA4 Migration Support  

GA4 is more sophisticated than Universal, so we suggest getting some help or ensuring that someone on your team with deep analytics experience tackle it. For current Two Octobers clients, we will offer the above services at a discount. Please contact [email protected] for more information.