Nothing stays the same forever, Change is always happening. The same goes for Google Analytics it is getting a new avatar. Universal Analytics will be changed to GA4 from July 2023.
But as a website owner or as an advertiser you would be interested to know what new GA4 features can offer. How it is going to be different from UA? Let us try to find out how GA4 services are going to affect your businesses.
Universal Analytics is used to track data separately for mobile and desktop visitors which meant that if an online visitor visited your website on their phone and then later visited your app on their tablet the activity shall be tracked as two separate actions.
On the other hand, GA4 is built on a Customer-focused measurement framework which means that all user activity shall be tracked as a single user regardless of device or platform. This provides a much more compact idea of how users interact with your brand and products.
GA4 also utilizes Google signal data to find out how users interact with your products and services. Google Signal is a privacy-oriented data collection model that tracks user behavior across various devices and platforms. The best thing about Google Signal is that it can still track users even if they have cleared cookies or changed devices.
Another new update in Google Analytics is real-time analytics, which means you can detect changes in your traffic and user engagement as they occur. GA4 also offers a number of analysis techniques that can help you to identify customer segments, measure the impact of your marketing campaigns and track user behaviour.
As per Google’s announcement, Universal Analytics will stop working from July 1st, 2023, and will be replaced by the Advanced measurement solution GA4. Therefore it is recommended that you should make the transition as quickly as possible or else you will start losing your precious business data.
It will be better if you can start learning GA4 features before UA stops working as you will be able to recognize the differences in the data produced by both platforms and it will be a great learning curve for you.