Best GA4 practices that will knock your socks off
What is GA4?
GA4 or Google Analytics 4 is the latest version of Google Analytics that offers a wide range of new features. Its main objective is to help you dissect user behavior, analytics, and website traffic. However, with all the new features, it becomes difficult to figure out what needs to be done.
To help you achieve optimal results with GA4, here are some practices that will help you achieve your goals. We have covered everything from starting your account to tracking the analytics, so you can take better decisions regarding your website.
What’s new in GA4?
- Gathers website & app data to improve customer understanding
- Implements event-based data, not session-based
- New privacy control tools
- Simple patterns that offer help for predictive capabilities
- Direct integration with social media platforms to help you make informed decisions
Best practices in GA4
A new GA property
GA4 has properties specifically designed to capture large datasets compared to previous analytics. This enables you to learn more about your users’ app or web engagement rates, geographical impacts and user behavior. Additionally, GA4 also offers advanced features viz., improved reporting, enhanced measurements, and machine learning capabilities.
The new GA4 helps you simultaneously track your GA4 analytics and the universal analytics from one place. This is incredibly useful because it enables you in comparing both the analytics and in website optimization.
Enhanced measurements
Enhanced measurements enable you in monitoring user interactions with your app and website, such as file downloads, outbound link clicks, scroll depth, and video engagements. These options can give you a deeper understanding of which type of content is getting more engagement and how the users are engaging with it. This lets you optimize your content, promotional activities, and UI to get better engagement.
Enabling the “enhanced measurement” also gives you the option to create custom events and set up automated reports.
Make use of the web + app configuration tag
The “web + app configuration” is a single tag that has all the required information for GA4 to monitor, track, & report your website or app. The tag ensures you track all your data accurately and consistently across both app and web platforms. The tag also makes it easier to manage any changes you make in the future.
Instead of updating multiple tags, you can just update the web + app configuration tag.
Adding your website to Google Search Console
You can get valuable insights into user interaction with your content, and improve the same accordingly by adding your app or website to Google search console. You can then use this data and optimize your GA4 implementation to further ensure optimized results. GA4 offers detailed reports on your website’s performance which includes keywords driving highest traffic to your website, frequency of keyword appearing in search results, and potential issues with indexing.
E-commerce tracking
e-Commerce tracking helps you measure the performance of your online business such as the revenue, individual product performance, and transactions. This data can then be used for creating personalized marketing campaigns and website design. This gives you access to valuable insights that can help you scale your business.
Custom dimensions
You can improve the grasp on your user behavior by configuring custom dimensions of your platform. This data can be further used to create specifically targeted campaigns and to optimize your platform for higher conversions. Furthermore, custom dimensions can also aid in identifying areas in your website that need improvements with regards to user experience.
A fun fact? Custom dimension also allows you to track those data points that are not available in the default GA4 reports.
User behavior in real-time reports
Real-time reports let you see exactly how users are interacting with your website in real-time. This means you can promptly identify any issues or inconsistencies that need improvement, and make changes accordingly. For example, if you notice a sudden drop in traffic, you can investigate the cause quickly and take swift action to resolve it.
Set up alerts
Use GA4 reports to set up alerts for various events such as sessions, pageviews in google analytics, transactions, and revenue. GA4 also offers customization of these alerts, and setting of thresholds for when a particular alert should be activated. This helps you receive all important notifications without getting overwhelmed.
Link your analytics with other tools
By linking your Google analytics with other tools, you can leverage various features that can be a game changer for your business. For example, link your GA4 with your Google Ads account, and you’ll be able to see how the users interact with the ad campaigns before they land on your website. This will help you understand which ad campaigns are bringing in the most conversions and which ads need improvement.
Track link clicks & file downloads
Tracking outbound link clicks and file downloads help you measure conversions more accurately. If you know which files were getting downloaded or which links were clicked the most, you can better understand which type of content leads to increased conversions. The data gathered can further be used to optimize your marketing campaigns for higher conversions.
Making the switch
Implementing GA4 to its full capacity will happen gradually. Also, replication of Universal Analytics in GA4 is not a good idea because it is a completely different tool with different data models. Hence, you should first try and understand how GA4 works, its features, whether it fulfils your objective, and how it will help your business grow, and then implement the same.
If you are still hesitant about making the switch, we hope these GA4 best practices help you make the switch. If you need any technical help, reach out to <COMPANY NAME>, and our Google Analytics Experts can help get you set up for optimal data collection. For more information regarding GA4, please reach out to us <INSERT CTA>.
Read more: The Best Analytics Software – Best Online Services For Analytics.
