Tips for using GA4
Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is a powerful tool for website and app owners to measure user engagement, track performance, and optimize their digital presence. In this blog post, we will discuss the top 10 tips for using GA4 to get the most out of your data.
Set up GA4 properly
The first and most crucial step is to set up GA4 properly. This deciding how many GA4 properties you need for your setup, if you want to split out different websites, have a rollup property or one for testing and one for live. You’ll then need to connect the stream and publish the tags via GTM or place the tags directly on your sites. You’ll want to make sure you update the administration settings, including and excluding IP addresses, domains, referrers. If you’re migrating from UA it’s best to try and replicate some of these settings.Validate Enhanced Measurement
Enhanced Measurement is a feature in GA4 which gives you a lot of events out of the box, such as video watches, scrolls, file downloads. You may wish to enable ‘form tracking’ as part of this and set up the relevant custom dimensions. It’s worth validating this against your UA data. As this technology is automated, it doesn’t work for every website it’s worth making sure it works for you. One size fits all doesn’t work for all of us.
Set up Event Tracking
Event tracking in GA4 allows you to measure key on site or in app interactions and understand how users engage with you. The out of the box events aren’t likely to cover every scenario so you can set up events inside GA4 (similar to goals in the past) or configure new events via gtag or Google Tag Manager. It’s worth bringing a list with you if you’re migrating from UA.
Use Custom Dimensions and Metrics
Custom dimensions and metrics are critical for bespoking GA4 and getting the most out of the set up. Custom dimensions allow you to create new fields that you can use to analyse data, such as page categories or form field details for form submissions. Custom metrics allow you to set up metrics that worked in a similar way to goals in Universal Analytics.
Set up Conversions
Goals were the core actions in UA, and these have been replaced with Conversions inside GA4. Giving something a conversion status upweights it, allows it to be used in attribution and exported into other platforms such as Google Ads. Make sure you convert key events on your site into conversions. A good place to start is the goals you may have set up in UA, or key actions that you need GA4 for.
Use Audiences
Audiences in GA4 allow you to group users based on specific criteria and allow you to track them over time. They only work once set up and are not retroactive - so create these early. A key place to start is core segments you had in Universal Analytics. Audiences also integrate into Google Ads.
Create Explorations
Custom Explorations allow you to create dashboards with multiple types of data for your organisation to use. You can share them with other users. This is limited by data retention settings, so you’ll be unlikely to review data longer than 14 months in this view. These views also allow you to build out funnels, look at user flow and create cohorts of behaviour - types of analysis that you cannot do inside the main reporting section of GA4.
Review data driven attribution
GA4 uses machine learning to determine the channels that led to conversions on your site. It is best to review this model regularly against last click channel groupings, so that you can monitor how different they are. The data driven attribution is meant to be better as it includes signals we cannot access inside GA4, but it is worth tracking the deviation from the traditional last click model.
Configure your custom channel groupings
Custom channel groupings allow you to set up rules based on how you want to capture attribution traffic. It’s worth porting any rules over from UA, or reviewing your GA4 session default channel groupings to see if there is any miscategorisation. You can then recategorise using this feature inside the administration section of GA4.
Regularly review GA4
One of the key mistakes people make with analytics tools is they leave them alone too long. A good analytics implementation is like a well maintained garden. If you do the basics regularly then it will stay in control and work for you. If you leave it for a while, you’ll need to cut it back and you may find yourself overgrown and unable to use or trust it.
In conclusion, GA4 when set up well can be really beneficial to your business / organisation. It requires a good amount of overhead to set it up, and smaller amounts to keep it maintained and running. If you need help with either of these, or need to know how to use it - get in touch with us.