Posted on March 9, 2023 by Susan Mullin

Is your team ready for GA4?

With July 1, 2023, quickly approaching, it is more important than ever that your analytics team fully transitions to GA4. It’s not enough to simply set up a GA4 property; you need to rethink the whole process. Though the transition to an entirely new analytics system can seem tedious and overwhelming, GA4 has its benefits – especially with regards to reporting.

Data analysts and web developers likely understand what the impact the transition to GA4 will have on their work, but what about digital content specialists and social media managers who rely on Google Analytics for insights too?

What’s changing?

Google is shifting away from its current iteration of Analytics, called Universal Analytics (UA), in favor of the newer platform called Google Analytics 4 (GA4). GA4 provides a more advanced and comprehensive analysis of user behavior than UA. Why the change? GA4 offers a wide range of features and benefits, shifting focus from session-based data to event-based, providing better privacy controls, and easier-to-manage integration with other Google tools.

Learning GA4 Reports

Google Analytics reports have long provided insight into where best to invest company resources. GA4 reports, unlike those in Universal Analytics (UA), exist within their own easy-to-find tab within the GA4 menu.

Within this reporting tab are a number of pre-existing reports for you to use, which are also customizable to your team’s needs. Reports are broken into three sections, which are further divided into more niche groups.

1. Overviews with Reports Snapshot and Realtime: This first section provides general insight into your site metrics. The real-time report in particular shows activities as they happen in real-time. You can see the number of active users, the pages they are visiting, and the events they are triggering.
2. Behaviors and Actions with Life Cycle: This second section is divided into acquisition, engagement, monetization, and overview.
   • Acquisition: Discover how users find your website or platform. Do users tend to find you from paid search, or social media? From email newsletters or referrals?
   • Engagement: How are users interacting with your site? Use the engagement report to find average session duration, bounce rate, and the number of pages per session.
     • The “Pages and Screens” report in particular provides detailed information on traffic, conversion events, user behavior, and top-performing content.
   • Monetization: Learn how much revenue you’re generating. Find information on total revenue, the average revenue per user, revenue by traffic source, and more!
3. Demographics with User: The third and final section of the reports tab splits into demographics and tech. Where are your users located? What are their interests? What technology and browser are they using to interact with your brand?

Overall, GA4 is a more powerful and user-centric analytics tool

It helps businesses understand their customers better and make data-driven decisions. These reports are just a few examples of the many insights you can access with GA4. By using GA4, you can gain a deeper understanding of your website or app performance and more effectively use data to improve your user experience and drive more conversions.

For more information and general help on GA4, be sure to bookmark the Google help page.

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