My Thoughts (So Far) on Google Analytics 4

Google Analytics 4 (GA4), formerly known as App + Web, was launched in late 2019 and we have been encouraged to dual-tag Universal Analytics (UA) and GA4 on websites in order to start experience it.

New technology is good and all, but at the time, I did not quite see what the real benefits were for the users.

After implementing GA4 on a few websites, I’m starting to see it now. Let me share with you what I experienced, so far.

Simplified Set Up

UA has Views where the data buckets sit:

Views are useful to segregate your data. However:

• Unlike reporting segments (filtered at reporting), Views data (filtered at collection) cannot be changed retrospectively.
• More often than not, it causes confusion: Should I use Views or reporting segments?
• Most of the time, we use a single Master View anyway.
• Having a lot of Views tend to cause confusion. They end up not being used and you see a lot cases like this:

GA4 does away with Views. The property is the data bucket and it becomes more like a “Roll Up” property where you set up one or more incoming data streams. Example:

This speeds up the property setup tremendously.

Note: Some users will be looking to replicate Views use cases in GA4. We’ll cover this in a future article.

Jump-Start Your Tracking

In UA, you need to manually set up (eg. via Google Tag Manager) additional tracking such as page scroll depth, outbound clicks, and video engagement. In GA4, it’s all done in the web stream config called Enhanced Measurement, all without coding.

You can literally start tracking in minutes and getting insights on:

• Page views
• Page scrolls
• Outbound clicks
• Site search
• Video engagement
• File downloads

And I’m sure more automatic tracking will be added in the future.

Unified Tracking Model

In UA, you have many hit types. Using the spreadsheet analogy, UA hits look something like this:

2 things to notice here:

• Because of the different hit types, reporting cannot be unified. You have to go to different sections of the UA interface to get the correct reports.
• UA presents some rigid structure such as the Event Category/Action/Label dimensions. It tries to cater to most event tracking scenarios but in the real world it doesn’t always align.

GA4 has a more unified and flexible model consisting of Events + Parameters (built-in and custom). You decide how you want your web/mobile activities tracked in order to give you the best insights. For example, the above UA examples can be tracked in GA4 like this:

Reporting is also unified in one place:

Note: There are specialized reports that give you enhanced insights such as Page Engagement, Ecommerce, and more to come.

Overall, my experience implementing GA4 has been a positive one. There are still kinks to be ironed out, new features to be added, and new reporting capabilities to be explored. But I feel like I’m witnessing a great measurement foundation being realized here.

Sparkline aims to provide data accuracy, comprehension and consolidation, and most importantly, tangible insights for businesses. Get in touch if you’d like to learn more.