Important Change From 1 July
If your business has a website, then most likely, behind the scenes, Google Analytics is being used to monitor and report website traffic. It also helps to understand your customer’s needs. And with technological advancements, a good change is about to happen.
From 1 July 2023, your current Google Analytics will only track limited data. If online performance is crucial to your business success, where you can make tangible choices to increase your bottom line, ask our team to upgrade you to the new Google Analytics 4 (GA4) so your statistics don’t flatline.
Here’s a fun and comical video to watch that explains in simple terms, more about Google’s update to GA4.
What Is Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a system that tracks your website performance and user behaviour. It’s quietly working in the background to track how many people visit your website and what they do on your website. Google Analytics has the ability to track up to 200 different metric points, such as website performance, users, unique visitors, bounce rates, and so much more.
If you have a website with us, Google Analytics would have been tracking data since the day your website went live, so it will potentially have years of data to see how your website is performing.
Benefits Of Google Analytics 4 (GA4)
GA4 is the newest version of Google Analytics and is a huge leap forward in data analytics. The biggest improvement is the focus on tracking from a user perspective.
In the past, Google Analytics focussed on tracking individual sessions where a user is on your website. The new GA4 turns the focus to users more broadly and their actions on the website across many visits, including across different devices and platforms. This means it can do a much better job of tracking the same user across their mobile phone, Facebook, desktop computer etc, so you get a clearer picture of your website users. Are they brand new users every time? Or are they just coming to your website from a different device? Do the same users come to your website many times? Are they coming from an Ad one time and then coming back another way?
There’s also a shift in focus on user privacy around the world, so tracking needs to adapt to allow useful data to be tracked for business metrics, while respecting the privacy of users.
Here’s a clip from Google which explains a bit about the changes relating to user privacy and how that’s important for the new Google Analytics 4.
What Does That Mean For Me?
So, while you might not use Google Analytics often (or at all), it’s important to keep tracking this data so that you have it for future marketing campaigns. For example; when our team of specialists at Catalyst Directions work to improve positions in Google for a business or run Google Ads, we need this data to get you good results, benchmarking against past results. And with changes available to view and access from month to month or year to year, you have clear insight into what’s going on behind the scenes.
The change to Google Analytics 4 also requires a change on your website to start tracking data. Your existing tracking code will still track some data, but will be limited after 1 July.
While the benefits are many, the change is easy. Ask our skilled team, and we can do it for $125, or we can log it under your Monthly Service Agreement if you have one.
Remember, the old Analytics stops on 30 June 2023, so only limited data will be tracked after that. Therefore, you’ll need to have the new Google Analytics 4 in place before then to keep tracking data, and to take advantage of the new GA4 tracking capabilities.
