4 Benefits We Love About GA4

What were your first thoughts when you first opened up the Google Analytics 4 (GA4) platform? If you’re anything like us, it was a mix of wanting to immediately exit out and pure excitement. Though the excitement won us over, we spent a lot of time learning what was new and what the benefits were. 

Now that we’ve had time to explore (and love) GA4, we’re here to share our favorite features. We promise it’s much less intimidating than you might think.

Enhanced Measurements ✨

Remember the days when you wanted to track file downloads or scroll depth, so you went to good ol’ Google Tag Manager (GTM) to set up tracking? While GTM is still an incredible tool to keep in your back pocket, GA4 now lets you track these events within the platform. Here’s the full list of things you’re able to track in GA4 without using GTM:

• Pageviews
• File downloads
• Scroll depth
• Outbound link clicks
• Site searches
• Video engagement 

When you’re setting up your GA4 property, make sure you’re turning on Enhanced Measurement tracking to use these new tools. Afterwards, you can begin to see data in the Events and Conversions reports. 

Simplified Conversion Tracking 📈

In Universal Analytics you had to configure your goals through a lengthy process. In GA4, goals went away and were replaced by conversions. You can still think of them the same way, as they contribute to the success of your website. Though they are now much, much easier to set up.

With only one toggle (yes, only one click!), you can select any event in GA4 to be considered a conversion. In our example below, we chose to mark “file_download” as a conversion. Now, when we navigate to our conversion report, we will see this event on the list.

Explorations 🚀

When you’re ready to dive deeper into your analytics data, Explorations will become your best friend. Explorations allow you to explore your data on a different level and go beyond standard key metrics. When you first navigate to Explorations you’ll be greeted with a number of options. Here’s a quick breakdown of what each one can do:

• Free-form exploration: Explore your data in a familiar crosstab layout. You can also apply different visualization styles in free form.
• Cohort exploration: Gain insights from the behavior and performance of groups of users related by common traits.
• Funnel exploration: Visualize the steps users take to complete tasks on your site.
• Segment overlap: See how different user segments relate to each other. 
• User exploration: Examine the users that make up the segments you create or import. You can also drill down into individual user activities.
• Path exploration: Visualize the paths your users take as they interact with your website.
• User lifetime: Explore user behavior and value over their lifetime as a customer. 

There’s much more to the Explorations interface. And essentially your possibilities are endless. So keep inquiring about your data, and use Explorations to help you answer those complex questions.  

A User-Centric Interface🧑🏽‍💻

Going between UA and GA4 is night and day. Overall, GA4 just feels better and looks better. It can be daunting that your pageviews aren’t where they used to be and the session duration metric is out the window. But as you start to move around in GA4 and understand what the new metrics mean, you realize it’s much more focused on users (as it should be). 

Being able to see one number for how many of your users are engaged and moving around on your website is much more valuable than how long they spent on your website — possibly doing nothing. GA4 keeps users at the forefront, and marketers/analysts next. It’s simplified processes for us and given us creative ways to explore our data beyond a standard metric report. Keeping the platform user-centric is a subtle reminder that what’s most important is our users – not us.

Our Next Steps

For our valued clients – we will take the lead on setting you up for success with GA4. You’ll receive communication from our marketing team. So keep an eye out for upcoming emails. 

If you’re not on our client list, we’re still here to help. If you have any questions about GA4, feel free to connect with our marketing team. We can even hop on a call with you.