Google transitioned exclusively to Google Analytics 4 (GA4) in July 2023. Whether you have an established GA4 account or are starting a new property, our helpful checklist ensures you’re collecting the essential insights for your website.
Transitioning to GA4
A Google Analytics 4 property can be created at analytics.google.com. If you’ve yet to add analytics to your website, this webpage will walk you through the basic setup and installation.
If your website had a functioning Universal Analytics (UA) property, Google likely auto-generated a basic GA4 property during the 2023 transitional period from UA. If not, a GA4 Setup Assistant within Google Analytics’ Admin section can assist in migrating your website from UA to GA4.
Getting More from GA4
Assuming your website has a GA4 property actively collecting data, there are additional steps you can take to collect advanced insights and better leverage this data.
- Platform Integrations: ensure any platforms connected to your UA data (e.g. Google Ads or Google Merchant Center) are transitioned to your new GA4 property. This ensures continued access to any pertinent audience or conversion data.
- Google Signals: this setting assists GA4 in associating user data across multiple devices. Google Signals provides a more comprehensive picture of visitors’ behaviors, often occurring across multiple touch points with your site and from more than one device. This setting is located within Admin > Data collection and modification > Data collection.
- Enhanced Measurement: measures additional interaction data not captured by GA’s default measurement. Enhanced Measurement was a noticeable addition with GA4, allowing easy measurement of interactions such as page scrolling depth, video engagement, and file downloads without requiring additional development involvement.
- Internal Traffic: GA4 doesn’t feature the property views that were a core UA element. Most businesses utilized these for filtering certain segments of traffic, such as internal site traffic from their staff. This functionality still exists within GA4 though is now set by visiting Admin > Data collection and modification > Data streams > Configure tag settings (for Google Tag users), and Define internal traffic (accessible via the Show All dropdown.)
- Audiences: the ability to create and leverage specific segments of your site’s visitors also received an upgrade in GA4. Audiences are helpful for better understanding the behaviors of specific user groups (such as those arriving from a particular source or visiting a specific section of your site) and tailoring remarketing campaigns to keep them engaged. Viewing and creating audiences is accessible via Admin > Data display > Audiences. Create your preferred audiences within GA4 as soon as possible to begin capturing this data since audiences do not populate retroactively.
- Conversions: ensure you’ve migrated any important conversion events from UA to continue measuring these actions on your site. GA4 measures some events by default though it doesn’t automatically set them as “key events.” Among the events not typically captured by default settings are specific form submissions and clicks to call so you’ll want to bring these into GA4 as soon as possible. Google Tag Manager is a popular method of doing so.
Summary
Google’s Universal Analytics properties ceased capturing data in 2023. Ensure your business has migrated to Google Analytics 4 (or a comparable platform) to continue measuring important data from your website visitors. Additional tools are accessible in GA4 to enhance your data collection with more comprehensive and actionable insights.
