Google Analytics 4: The Number One Choice for Advanced Tracking and Data Analysis

Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is the newest version of Google’s web analytics service. It’s designed to track and report website and mobile app traffic and events.

Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is the newest version of Google’s web analytics service. It’s designed to track and report website and mobile app traffic and events. Statistically, over 13.5 million websites are connected to Google Analytics 4.

The tool can help you understand how visitors engage with your platform, strengthening your marketing strategy and effectively accomplishing business goals. The latest version of Google Analytics has undergone many changes compared with Universal Analytics to provide more insights and simplify your research work. In a nutshell, GA4 focuses on predictions and customizability.

Is Google Analytics 4 Your Solution?

This service is used in various industries. It’s especially useful for digital marketing, SMM, and e-commerce. Let’s reveal how different experts use the tool to achieve their goals:

Digital marketers monitor their campaigns’ performances, analyze user behavior, and think through their future approaches. They focus on tracking traffic sources, bounce rates, and conversions.
E-commerce managers track product sales, earnings, and user behavior throughout the shopping journey. GA4 helps them detect the items people view most frequently, find out at which stages potential customers drop off in the checkout process, etc.
Web analysts use the service to analyze website behavior and figure out how visitors interact with the platform. The data obtained helps them optimize the site’s interface and minimize bounce rates.
SEO specialists track organic traffic, keyword performance, and user engagement. Google Analytics assists them in detecting the search queries that drive the maximum amount of traffic.
PPC specialists utilize GA4 to understand whether paid advertisements are effective. Experts monitor cost per conversion, ROI on ad spend, and traffic sources to refine their paid campaigns.
SMM specialists track specific landing pages or campaign URLs shared on social media.
UX/UI Designers reveal whether a platform’s design needs improvement. Professionals track how visitors navigate a specific page, where they tend to click the most, etc.

How Do You Set Up GA4?

Setting up this tool involves the following steps: creating an account, creating a GA4 property, providing business details, selecting business objectives, and creating a data stream. Let’s dig deeper into these stages:

Creating an account on Google Analytics 4. Hit the https://analytics.google.com/ link and log in to your Gmail profile. On the left sidebar, click the Admin button, select Create, and press Account. Put a name to your GA4 account and pay attention to Account Data Sharing Settings. You can control how Google shares your GA data across its different services. Select the necessary options and click Next to progress to the next stage.

Create a GA4 property. Simply put, a property represents a website or a mobile application. Actually, it’s a container that organizes and processes data collected from a site or app. You can even set up a property that collects information from multiple sources. Enter your property details, including its name, reporting time zone, and currency. Press Next.

Enter your business details. Opt for your sphere category (from Finance and Real Estate to Shopping and Food & Drink). Then, fill out the Business size field and press Next.

Select your business goals. You can choose from these options: Generate leads, Understand web and/or app traffic, Drive sales & conversions, and View user engagement & retention. If you’d instead focus on reports covering the entire customer life cycle, opt for Other business objectives. Then, click Create. Last, you must accept the tool’s terms and conditions.

Set up data collection. Decide on from where you’ll be gathering data: the Web, the iOS app, or the Android app. Click on the chosen option and provide mandatory information about your source. To set up a web stream, enter your website address and add your stream name. Pay attention to the fact that Enhanced measurement is enabled by default, and you can immediately configure its parameters. If you’d like to collect information from your mobile app, you must set a stream Firebase SDK. Follow the prompts from your screen.

After that, you can install GA4 on your website.

Methods of Installing Google Analytics on Your Site

You can pass the installation process through several methods:

Using GTM (Google Tag Manager). This tool assists specialists in managing different tracking codes. If you’ve already set up GTM, navigate to https://tagmanager.google.com/, log in to your Gmail account, and choose your website’s GTM container. Press Add a new tag on your project’s workspace overview. Go to the Tag Configuration panel. In the Choose tag type window, pick Google Analytics: GA4 Event. Indicate your GA4 data stream’s measurement ID in the Measurement ID field. In the Triggering section, select All pages. Click Save in the top right corner of the screen. To apply the changes, you should publish the container. Hit the Submit button, and then Publish.
Directly on your site. Copy the tracking code snippet and paste it into the section of every page of your platform. If you utilize CMS, you can add this code to your theme settings or use a plugin.

Where do you look for the tracking code for your website to start data collection? Open your Google Analytics property, navigate to Admin, then Data Streams. On your web stream page, you’ll see the Measurement ID starting with G-.

Google Analytics 4 vs. Universal Analytics: Let’s Compare

In 2024, Google Analytics 4 entirely replaced its predecessor, Universal Analytics. The newest analytics service provides more powerful insights and improved tracking. Let’s delve into the significant differences between these two services to reveal the benefits and distinct features of GA4:

Data model. Google Analytics 4 relies on an event-based model, which means every action, including page views, form submissions, or watching videos, is tracked as a separate event. Universal Analytics was based on a session-based scheme. Every session (different user interactions within a particular time frame of about 30 min) was considered the foundation of all reporting. Hence, a new session started if a user left the website and returned after 31 minutes. Furthermore, if a potential customer switched devices (from their smartphone to PC, for instance), UA classified them as a new user. In Google Analytics 4, the events are tied to the visitor rather than sessions, allowing for a more comprehensive analysis of user behavior across various devices. Better cross-device tracking is possible thanks to Google Signals, User ID, and AI technologies.
Machine learning. The deeper integration of machine learning makes Google Analytics 4 provide three major predictive metrics. The tool can estimate whether a user will make a purchase or become inactive within the next week. Moreover, AI-powered insights predict revenue from a specific user in the next four weeks. ML (Machine Learning) also identifies anomalies, builds audience segments based on future behavior, and makes up for missing information. Universal Analytics provided fewer ML-based tools, such as detecting high-value sessions, creating remarketing audiences of individuals likely to buy goods/services, etc. Therefore, GA4 assists in more realistic conversion tracking, enhanced ad targeting, and avoiding ineffective marketing strategies.
Reports. UA offered pre-built reports, such as Conversions, Behavior, and Acquisition. Google Analytics 4 includes fewer default reports but provides Explorations, a state-of-the-art tool for custom analysis. You can analyze user navigation patterns, compare user groups, and combine several dimensions and metrics within Custom Reports to obtain deeper insights.
Key metrics. Universal Analytics included Pageviews, Sessions, and Bounce Rate parameters. GA4 is equipped with new metrics, such as Engagement Time, Engagement Rate, and Scroll Depth. Let’s consider an example. A potential customer navigates to your blog, reads an article for five minutes, and exits your site. UA would identify this as a bounce, while GA4 perceives this as an Engaged Session since the user spent some time on the page. Notably, Google Analytics 4 counts it as an Engaged Session if the user spends at least 10 seconds on the page or makes at least two interactions.
Event tracking. In Universal Analytics, specialists had to manually set up various events using Category, Action, and Label parameters. Google Analytics 4 beckons professionals with automatic tracking for common events like clicks, site searches, and downloads. Thus, you can expect a more straightforward data collection process.
Data privacy. GA4 relies upon enhanced privacy controls compared to Universal Analytics. IP Anonymization without extra settings, Consent Mode, improved User Data Controls, and Cookieless Tracking have been implemented.

Furthermore, GA4 comes with an updated user interface, allowing for more in-depth data analysis. It provides more opportunities for report customization. The reporting interface primarily focuses on the user lifestyle; it encompasses stages such as acquisition, engagement, monetization, and retention. The best thing is that Google Analytics 4 lets you define audiences in real time. As for Universal Analytics, audience creation was limited to default dimensions and metrics.

The Most Commonly Used Reports

To get a general understanding of the tool, familiarize yourself with the main types of reports in Google Analytics 4 and the critical metrics they provide.

Acquisition Reports

Such reports show you where your visitors come from, which is crucial for any business. With their help, you can seamlessly uncover the sources bringing traffic to your website. You’ll find out how many users find you in search results, hit Google ads, visit your platform through a URL directly from their browsers, and click on social media posts.

The Acquisition section lets you work with the following reports:

Overview (summarizes your acquisition data);
User Acquisition (focuses on new users);
User acquisition cohorts (refers to groups of users based on their common attributes, behaviors, and activities);
Traffic Acquisition (focuses on new sessions).

Such reports provide quantitative measures and qualitative data related to your traffic sources. You can determine which sources produce longer/shorter sessions, the best conversion rates, or higher engagement. Find out the most effective channels and enhance your entire marketing tactic.

Engagement Reports

Well, now you know where your potential customers come from. After that, you should figure out how they interact with your website or mobile application. For this purpose, you can utilize Engagement reports in Google Analytics 4. The section comprises the following reports:

Overview: helps you compare the most important metrics over time and realize which pages and screens potential customers are visiting with greater interest. By default, it reveals Average engagement time, Active user in the last 30 minutes, User stickiness, Average engagement time per session, and other summary cards.
Events: demonstrates how many times every event is triggered and the number of users triggering each event on your web platform or mobile application. This report tells you whether you need to improve user experience to drive conversions. The report includes various metrics, such as Event count, Event value, Total revenue, Total users, and Event count per active user.
Pages and screens: informs you about the pages users visit on your platform and the screens they open on your mobile application. Such data lets you detect what content potential customers are more interested in, and what pages and screens bring your conversions more frequently. Here are the most demanded metrics: Average engagement time, Event count, Key events, Total revenue, Views, Views per active user, and Active users.
Landing page: shows you the first page a user lands on when navigating your website. Moreover, you can understand the number of visitors on a specific page. Find out which pages perform better and detect the “weakest” ones. The Landing page report includes several metrics: Average engagement time per session, Active users, Key events, Sessions, New users, and Total revenue.

Therefore, engagement reports contribute to a better understanding of user behavior, detecting high-performing content, enhancing user experience, etc.

Monetization Reports

These reports primarily target business owners, including e-commerce websites and mobile applications. They help you figure out which goods are best-sellers, which advertising campaigns work, and which segments feature the highest conversion rates. As for mobile apps, these reports monitor in-app purchases.

Let’s take a glance at the available types of reports in this section:

Overview. This report summarizes your revenue data. The following cards are presented: Total revenue, Total ad revenue, Purchase revenue, First-time purchasers, Average purchase revenue per active user, Purchase revenue by Order coupon, etc.
Ecommerce purchases. This report provides comprehensive insights into your revenue, the number of purchases, the most demanded goods, the average value of every order, the number of add-to-cart events, etc. The Ecommerce purchases report implies the following metrics: Item revenue, Items added to the cart, Items viewed, and Items purchased.
Purchase journey. The report reveals the path users go through before buying various items and highlights when most visitors are prone to drop off. Thus, you can detect steps in the funnel that require improvement. The report comprises these steps: Session start, View product, Add to cart, Begin checkout, and Purchase. Only two metrics are involved: Retention rate and Abandonment rate.
Checkout journey. It tells you the number and percentage of visitors who started checkout and made each of the consecutive steps on the funnel. You may analyze how many potential customers abandoned each step and retained after each stage.
Promotions. The report helps you evaluate the impact of each promotional deal on purchases and revenue. Pay attention to the list of metrics: Item promotion click-through rate, Item revenue, Items purchased, Items checked out, Items added to cart, Items clicked in promotion, and Items viewed in promotion.
Transactions. Shows the number of unique sales. You can analyze the total income from sales, the count of completed purchases, the number of goods sold, etc.

Use the obtained information to optimize product placements, improve promotional tactics, and increase revenue streams.

Retention Reports

Do you puzzle over whether your online project effectively retains visitors? This section is your go-to solution. Understand user engagement and loyalty and find out how frequently potential customers return to your website or mobile application after their first visit/interaction. Retention Reports include the following information:

The number of new visitors:
The number of returning users:
User retention in percentages;
User retention by cohort;
User engagement;
User engagement by cohort;
Lifetime value.

Analyze the average time visitors spend engaged on your website or application after they arrive. Use the resulting insights to work on user loyalty and refine current marketing strategies.

User Reports

Create these reports to get valuable information about user behavior and characteristics. You can rely on the two groups of reports to sort everything out:

User attributes. Monitor active users by country, city, gender, interests, age, and language. Track active visitors in the last 30 minutes. Determine your most engaged and beneficial audiences by tracking the following metrics: Total users, Average session duration, Sessions, New users, Views per session, and Total revenue.
Tech. These reports reveal the technologies people use to access your mobile app or website (their gadget model, browser, display resolution). You can even find out what operating systems potential customers use.

User reports assist you in making data-driven decisions about enhancing user experience and getting the most out of marketing efforts. Create custom user segments and analyze different groups of visitors based on yardsticks that are critical to your business objectives. What’s more, demographic and interest data help you better understand your potential clients and elaborate tailored marketing campaigns.

The Business Objectives Collection of Reports

Google Analytics can create reports based on the information about your business and primary goals. Let’s briefly describe the available options:

If you strive to generate leads, GA4 will provide access to User acquisition, Traffic acquisition, and Landing page reports.
Have you chosen Drive online sales during setup? You’ll be able to create such reports as Ecommerce purchases, Promotions, Purchase journey, Checkout journey, and Transaction ID.
Is Raising brand awareness your goal? Google Ads campaigns, Demographic details, and Pages and screens reports will help you make the most of your strategy.
To examine user behavior, you will use Events and Pages and screens reports.

Attention! The Business objectives collection substitutes the Life cycle collection (with Acquisition, Engagement, Monetization, and Retention reports) if you indicate business goals during setup.

Notably, you have the opportunity to customize typical reports to better fit your requirements. For example, you can modify dimensions, enable new metrics to add key performance indicators (KPIs), utilize filters, alter chart types, adjust summary cards, etc.

Sophisticated Features of Google Analytics 4

GA 4 supports several advanced features to take your marketing strategy to the next level:

Enhanced measurement events. Collect common user interactions automatically (page views, site searches, scrolls, etc.) without code changes. You can configure this option if needed.
Custom events and parameters. Monitor user interactions that the Enhanced Measurement tool does not automatically collect. For this purpose, use Google Tag Manager or implement custom code. This feature lets you capture specific actions valuable for your business goals, such as button clicks or form submissions. You can add up to 25 custom parameters per event.
Audience Creation and Segmentation. You can build audiences by setting conditions based on metric, dimension, and event data you collect from a property. Thanks to machine-learning capabilities, GA 4 can predict audiences based on expected behaviors.
The Explorations collection. These techniques supply you with deeper insights into your potential client’s behavior. To analyze data in more depth, you can compare different audience segments, analyze user retention over time, monitor step-by-step user behavior, and even visualize user paths through your website.

All the above features make your analysis even more accurate and enlightening.

Unique Functionalities of GA4

It would seem that we’ve discussed a bunch of cutting-edge capabilities of Google Analytics, but the list of its features doesn’t end here. We’ve compiled other essential aspects you should know about this exclusive tool:

The availability of real-time reports. Obtain instant insights into current user activity over the last 30 min. You can track potential customers’ locations, the pages they’re viewing, events, and conversions.
The freshest opportunities for mobile app analytics. Utilize a single platform for analyzing both sites and mobile applications. Link information between them for a greater understanding of user paths.
The accessibility of custom alerts. Receive notifications when specific events occur. Keep abreast of the crucial changes.

Google Analytics 4 lets you export data in compatible formats with other analytics and visualization services. You may also analyze your data via the GA4 API.

GA4 Integrations

This tool becomes even more effective when integrated with other Google services. Usually, specialists connect Google Analytics 4 to Google Ads, Google Search Console, and Google Data Studio. Let’s observe these integrations concisely:

Google Ads. Understand your advertising efficiency and determine how new visitors interact with paid advertisements. View Ad data within Google Analytics reports, import GA4 goals and events as Ad conversions, and build remarketing audiences. Refine your campaigns to improve ROI.
Google Search Console. Figure out how your organic search traffic behaves on your platform, what keywords bring individuals to your site, and how frequently potential customers click on your links. Ultimately, you’ll understand which pages need SEO optimization and spot search performance trends.
Google Data Studio. Based on your Google Analytics data, generate in-depth, shareable reports. Visualize information to make it more digestible and comprehensive.

If your business employs Google Shopping ads, you can also connect GA4 to Google Merchant Center to monitor shopping campaign effectiveness alongside website behavior.

GA4 Alternatives

Look at the most sought-after competitors to Google Analytics:

Adobe Analytics. This tool provides even more advanced settings and focuses on artificial intelligence insights. However, you must buy a subscription to make the most of this service.
Usermaven. The service automatically captures events without any custom code, bypasses ad blockers, and gets traffic answers from an AI chatbot. You can start a 30-day trial and then choose a paid plan.
Semrush Traffic Analytics. This service analyzes website traffic and benchmarks it against competitors. The availability of a complete suite of SEO tools is a nice touch. You can try Semrush Traffic Analytics for free.
Clicky. This tool focuses on real-time analytics and heatmap tracking. A free plan has a limited suite of functions.
Matomo. This open-source web analytics platform assists specialists in tracking site traffic and user behavior. What’s more, you can expect extra options, such as A/B testing, SEO keyword reporting, and heatmaps. Before purchasing a subscription, you can test the tool at no cost.

Therefore, alternatives to Google Analytics 4 exist, and some provide valuable additional features for deeper insights. However, almost every service envisages paid subscriptions.

Pricing

You can utilize GA4 for free. Nevertheless, large enterprises frequently opt for its premium version, Google Analytics 360. This advanced service implies enhanced data processing, more excellent customization options, extended integrations with other Google Marketing Platform products, and personal assistance. Its minimum price is 50,000 USD per year.

Pluses and Minuses of Google Analytics 4

Advantages:

This tool is free.
Event-based tracking is the foundation, allowing for more flexibility than session-based tracking in the older version.
GA4 ensures cross-platform user identification.
Machine learning and NLP elements have been implemented.
The opportunity to create customizable reports thanks to Explorations.
Enhanced funnel analysis.
Free BigQuery integration for deeper analysis.
Improved Google Ads integration.

Drawbacks:

It can seem overwhelming to complete beginners.
GA4 focuses on anonymous data and doesn’t support user identification via email addresses.
Limited historical data.

Conclusion

Google Analytics 4 comes with jaw-dropping pros. First, it’s free and scalable. Second, you can track numerous traffic sources, create customizable reports, and obtain AI-powered insights to detect anomalies and keep up with the latest trends. Although some drawbacks exist, you can expect more accurate and enlightening information for your professional or business needs.

Natalia Sukhina