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Why change to GA4

The short answer: You have to. 

Google will stop gathering data from any websites still using the old UA tag, and although that historic data will remain in your UA property, you’ll have a hard time drawing any useful analysis if half your data is in your UA property and the rest is in GA4. There is no way to “see UA data” in your GA4 property – it’s a hard line between the two properties. 

But it’s not all bad news – GA4 is an upgrade for a reason. GA4 properties allow you to do the following neat tricks which aren’t possible with UA: 

  1. More detailed user journey analysis – GA4 digs deeper into a user’s actions on your website, measuring clicks, attention, scrolling, device switching, video-watches, downloads, and much more.
  2. Better AI – Without getting into all the technical details, GA4 uses improved AI to predict your users’ goals and next actions.
  3. Flexible and intelligent privacy controls, for you and your users. In the future cookies are likely to be far less common, so internet privacy needs to adapt to that – GA4 puts you in the perfect position to do so.
  4. Simple, customisable goals and events – If you’ve ever tried setting up custom goal measurements in UA you may have found it a bit frustrating. GA4 have simplified the whole process, while simultaneously giving you far greater control and flexibility. Got an uncommon, unique event only found on your specific website? You can track it with GA4.
  5. Better reports! This one might sound surprising to anyone who’s dipped their toe in GA4, because at first glance it looks more like half the reports you’re used to are missing… But the truth is GA4 gives you the ability to create user-friendly, fully custom reports with ease, you can get the information you want in whatever format you want it. 

There’s much more to it than just the above, but needless to say GA4 is an upgrade – just one that’ll take a bit of getting used to. 

When to change to GA4

You may be thinking “the switch is in July 2023, I don’t need to deal with this yet”, but because of the issue we mentioned above (old UA data being unavailable in GA4) you’re much better off making the change as soon as possible – That way GA4 will be gathering data alongside UA until July 2023, and you won’t be left with a distinct cut-over date. 

By switching now, come July 2023 you won’t have any trouble drawing the data you need for the last 12 months, but if you only set up your GA4 property in July 2023 you won’t see the last 12 months’ data. Simple as.

How to change to GA4

Getting started

Thankfully Google have made it very easy to set up a GA4 property for your website. Follow these steps to get started:

  1. While logged into your current UA property, visit your Admin settings page (the cog at the bottom left of the screen) and click “GA4 Setup Assistant”

  2. Choose “I want to create a new Google Analytics 4 property”

  3. Proceed through the next step. Check “Enable data collection using your existing global site tag” so you won’t need to add a new tag script to your website header or Google Tag Manager.

  4. And you’re done! Click “Go to your GA4 property” to check it out

  5. You may need to wait up to 48 hours before you see any data

Finding basic information

Finding the information you’re used to in UA in GA4 takes a bit of getting used to, so we’ve outlined a few common reports and where to find them:

  • UA “Realtime” > GA4 “Realtime”
  • UA “Audience > Overview” = Create a custom report (see below)
  • UA “Audience > Demographics” = GA4 “User > Demographics Overview”
  • UA “Audience > Technology” = GA4 “User > Tech”
  • UA “Audience > Geo” = GA4 “User > Demographics Overview”
  • UA “Audience > Interests” = GA4 “User > Demographics Overview”
  • UA “Behaviour > Behaviour Flow” = Create a custom report (see below)
  • UA “Acquisition > Overview” = GA4 “Acquisition > Acquisition Overview”
  • UA “Acquisition > All Traffic > Channels” = GA4 “Acquisition > Traffic Acquisition”

You’ll likely find that some of the reports you’re used to in UA no longer exist in GA4, but don’t fret: All the data is still there, GA4 just gives you the “freedom” to create your own reports to see exactly what you want.

Creating custom reports

Creating custom reports is quite intuitive in GA4. You have different types of “base” reports you can start from, and simply drag and drop your desired metrics.

Let’s create a GA4 report to replicate the old UA “Behaviour Flow” page:

  1. Visit “Explorations” and choose the “Path Exploration” starting template

  2. First, we want to know the Landing Page of all traffic. To do this, click the dropdown under “Step +1” and change it to “Page Title and Screen Name”

  3. You can change the default timeline at the top left

  4. And you’re done! This exploration has been saved automatically and you can access it at any time under the Explore tab.

Also, if you click the “Library” button at the bottom of the page, you can reorganise all your reports with complete flexibility.

Hopefully that’s enough to get you started on GA4 – even if you only take the first step and create the GA4 property, and don’t worry about creating reports, you’ll still be in a great position come July 2023. The whole process should only take about 5 minutes.

If you need help or are interested in improving your Google rankings, we welcome you to reach out for a conversation.