Why You Need an Analytics Partner: Switching to Google Analytics 4

The world of enterprise analytics is shifting.  By 2028, the data analytics market is expected to be worth over $500 billion.  Approximately 28 million active websites use Google Analytics, and the company just announced an important shift.  Google recently publicized that Universal Analytics, introduced in 2012 as their data analytics processing feature, would stop processing data in the second half of 2023.  While this news may be shocking, this announcement gives businesses time to migrate to the future of Google Analytics, Google Analytics 4 (GA4).

GA4 is designed to simplify data collection by combining app and web analytics in a single platform.  Google Signals collects event data across mobile and web to track users who are logged in to Google.  GA4 data streams report hits for each platform, including web, Android, and iOS.  Instead of reporting visit length and time between page views like Universal Analytics, GA4 can report the average passing time before a user takes a certain action. 

So, what can you do to preserve your Universal Analytics and be ready for GA4?  Universal Analytics is a separate set of properties than GA4, meaning there is no direct upgrade path.  A shift to GA4 requires the realignment of a business’s data strategy.  Rewriting queries and setting up data export to BigQuery, recoding existing tags to work with GA4, and redoing dashboarding to track new metrics are just a few examples of this realignment.  This information may seem daunting, but with the expert help of InfoTrust, your analytics transition can occur with ease.