Time is running out for Google Analytics switch

By Ian Lockwood, digital marketing consultant and founder of Ian Lockwood Digital Consultancy.

Google Analytics as we know it will stop working on 30 June this year, forcing anyone who wants to keep using it onto the new(ish) GA4. If you’ve logged in to Analytics at any point in the last year, you can’t really have missed this thanks to the nag bar at the top of the screen!

GA4 is a very different beast to Universal Analytics (the one we have all come to know and love) and having set up an account, it is easy to look at it and run back to the old Analytics screaming that all the reports you want are missing and nothing works like it should.

Google announced it would begin auto-migration of accounts to GA4 starting in March and it is worth noting that, even if you had already set up a GA4 account before then, if you have not linked the old and new accounts or completed the migration checklist in GA4, Google may still have copied over or set up things automatically without your approval. Thankfully, there is a simple opt-out switch in the admin area, but do check if any GA4 settings such as “conversions” have mysteriously appeared.

Crucial to getting the most from GA4 is an understanding of how it uses events to gather data and the parameters these include, such as the file name of a download or the URL of an outbound click.

You can use these to create your own events to report as conversions (the GA4 equivalent of Goals), although it is common to need additional events sent from your website to record specific actions such as form submissions.

This is where Google Tag Manager comes into its own and, for many, using this to install GA4 on their website is a winning combination to make life a lot easier.

Conversions are, of course, critical to reporting on website performance – without them, you don’t really know how well your website or digital marketing is working. All business websites exist to generate customers from calls, contact forms or e-commerce sales, and not being able to see how these customers are generated from your website makes it impossible to evaluate digital marketing activities.

Beyond that, understanding how visitors get to your site, which pages they land on, the routes they then take through your site, where they’re from, what devices they are using and how they interact with your pages are all crucial to identifying ways to improve your website and, ultimately, the business it generates.

The good news is your Growth Hub has a number of “Make the switch to GA4” workshops arranged that are free to attend for eligible businesses, explaining how it all works and how to recreate the most useful reports from the old Analytics.

These sessions come with a free setup and audit service for your own GA4 account, to ensure that everything you want is measured and reported on correctly, including a video call to walk through how it all works.

Visit www.emc-dnl.co.uk/events to book a place.