Get Your GA4 Running. Head Out on the Highway.
Summer is here and you’re probably thinking about that getaway road trip you’ve been planning since February. But before you head out on the highway looking for adventure, now is the perfect time to take your new GA4 for a spin and explore the highways and bi-ways of the all new, redesigned Google Analytics 4.
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Not sure where to go? Assembly has you covered. We recently asked our Business Intelligence and Martech teams for suggestions on top destinations for exploring GA4 and getting the most mileage out of your new instance.
But before we get started – first a quick pre-trip checklist to make sure your up-to-speed with the latest traffic and weather updates from the world of analytics.
- Prior Free GA Sunsetting - July 1 is the end of the road for the free, prior version of Google Analytics called UniversalAnalytics. You can still access reporting for six months, but Universal Analytics will stop recording new data on the First of July. If your company licenses Google Analytics 360 – good news - you have a one-year extension.
- Some Assembly Required – GA4 is a separate installation of Google Analytics and does not runoff of the same tagging implementation, so if your organization relies on GA for performance data from the free version AND your analytics team has remaining GA4 implementation work to do – getting that squared away should be the priority. Google offers a five-part video series here.
- A Few Key Differences - As you’ve probably heard, there are a few things that have changed. Page views are less of a thing and engagement rate is the new bounce rate. Google offers detailed What’s Changed comparisons for metrics.
Alright, if your seatbelt is now securely fastened and you’re ready to hit the road, we’ve pulled together five of our favorite new destinations to explore behind the wheel of the new GA4.
- Google Marketing Platform Integrations – Previously, integrations with many components of the GMP stack, such as DV 360 and SA 360 were only available to companies paying to license GA 360. Now they are included with free GA4 accounts ,and they enable you to generate ROI reporting views of cost data together withGA attributed conversion reporting. Also, you can sync audiences built centrally in GA4 with your media targeting, including cross-device and predictively modelled audiences.
- Google Audiences - Smart segmentation is the key to successful marketing and GA4 empowers many smart segmentation options to build audiences for use with targeting and analysis. You can establish behavioral audiences based on event criteria like cart adds or video views. And you can develop audiences derived from segmentation on metrics like Lifetime Sessions or revenue over time. As your GA4 data maybe new and developing history, you can also hit the ground running with audiences derived from Google Signals, such as Interests and Age Groups.
- App Data Integration – If your company serves its customers with a mobile app, know that GA4was designed with you in mind. GA4’s event-based measurement model is engineered to put app and web measurement on a level playing field and allow companies to measure holistic conversion and engagement both within and across devices. If you offer an iOS or Android app and have not yet deployed the GA4F SDK (aka Firebase), then this is your next destination.
- Attribution Conversion Paths – OK, this one might be a little contentious given that Google recently announced it is sunsetting the ability to view first click, linear, time decay and position-based models in favor of the data-driven attribution model as the platform default. However, those soon-to-be-sunset models were rarely used and becoming less reliable. Meanwhile, the redesigned Conversion Paths reporting is a solid improvement over the comparable report in prior GA, especially the simple categorizations at top that show marketing channels in top down contribution sort order by Early, Mid and Late Touchpoint funnel positions. This is a simple, easy-to-understand view to demonstrate general channel contribution by funnel stage without making an inherently imprecise report appear artificially precise. It’s not perfect yet, however. The ability to select custom channel groupings within this view is not yet there, but we anticipate that will come in a future release.
- Explorer Reports – GA4’s clean left bar navigation has only four options, and two of them are for reporting. The first is simply labelled Reports and it will take you to the most sought reporting views such as users and revenue over time, default channel group acquisition metrics and snapshots of top trends. But, when you are ready to detour onto the roadless travelled, head for the other left nav report option called Explorer Reports. Here you’ll be invited to ‘Start a new Exploration’ with Funnel views, Cohort Paths or any combination of dimensions and metrics and available chart types within FreeForm. Our favorite templated option is the re-designed Path Exploration module that empowers you to click your way through diverging customer journey paths in your app or website. The experience is elegant and intuitive and certain to surprise you with engagement trends that enlighten.
Hopefully, this gets you out on the road to your own summer of GA4 exploration, or at least passes the time till the start of that real world road trip you’ve been planning. Safe travels!