Important updates to your web analytics
Tech alert: upgrade to GA4 highly recommended
There’s news related to the website performance tracking that Connected Vet undertake each month on our client’s behalf: Google is retiring its current analytics tool ‘Universal Analytics’ (UA) and replacing it with the entirely new Google Analytics 4, or ‘GA4’ for short.
In a nutshell, this means practices might like to consider the benefits of asking Connected Vet to complete a bit of work that will allow us to,
- Secure historic UA data and
- Give us full control over how GA4 reports
Even Google is recommending that current UA settings are manually transferred to GA4 to ‘ensure the quality of data’. This manual set up will help us monitor and create much more meaningful reports on how websites are performing.
But don’t panic, we’re here to explain what it’s all about and offer to take care of it for you…
Why is GA4 a big deal?
This update isn’t a tweak to UA; it’s a profound shift in how we approach tracking and a huge upgrade in the enabling technology; GA4 is in fact next-generation web analytics.
Once GA4 is properly configured on a website, we are able to identify new ways to boost traffic, improve engagement and ultimately achieve the business objectives of your practice! If the update is done properly, you’ll get all the stats you’re used to and much, much more insight.
GA4 offers us a great opportunity to further understand how well your website is working for you. A properly managed transition to GA4 can allow Connected Vet to fully track and understand your website performance.
Why is Google changing to GA4?
A couple of reasons: firstly, the way people use the internet has developed; think dynamic surfing across multiple devices, apps, and websites sites. Secondly, GA4 does a good job of tackling the sticky issue of data collection and consent.
Key dates
- From Mid March 2023, Google will begin to automatically set up GA4 properties for websites but it can only do this with generic settings. As Connected Vet have specific UA tracking goals set up for many of our clients these will need to be replicated in GA4.
From July 1st 2023, UA will be switched off and data on your UA goals will not be available to you.
From January 1st 2024, Google will remove historical UA data on how your website performed in the past. It’s a good idea to copy and save this data before it is deleted.
What if I don’t upgrade to GA4?
From July 1st, if you use UA goals, you’ll lose to the ability to make fully informed decisions about your website. This might include how to spend marketing budget, how to attract new customers, and how to tell why your website is being successful or not.
Without a properly configured GA4, Connected Vet will be unable to continue to fully explain the health and performance of your website.
What do I need to do and when?
Contact us as soon as you can to discuss how we can get this sorted before July 1st. We will charge a small one-off fee to configure GA4 tracking and archive UA data.
Please reach out to us for more details of how actively configuring GA4, rather than relying on the generic set up, will give you access to fresh intelligence about how your website is performing.