Are you ready for Google Analytics 4?

Important Google's Universal Analytics Changes

For those that have Google's Universal Analytics (UA) plugged into their websites (and if you haven’t, you should have) come the 1st July 2023 this is being retired and replaced by Google's Analytics 4 (GA4)

So what is Google Analytics/Universal Analytics?

In a nutshell GA/UA is a little piece of code that is placed in your website and monitors your website and your website users. The basics including monitoring website hits/users, where your traffic is coming from (social media, visitmidwales.co.uk, showmewales.co.uk etc). This is really important for businesses to monitor the performance of their own website/marketing.

So why are they changing?

The way google collects data is changing, for those that use UA you will probably have noticed it starting to creek at the seams 🙈, more and more browsers are blocking cookies which means that it’s become less reliable, and we see this often when we look at referrals from Visitmidwales.co.uk/showmewales.co.uk. Although we know that outgoing clicks are taking place from our websites, on providers website they often don’t register on UA.

Therefore, GA4 uses no cookies, so in theory this should provide much more reliable data for where website users are coming from. Helping businesses to tailor their marketing and know what sites are working for them and which aren’t. The new GA4 also uses ‘events’ whilst UA relies on ‘page views’ – This means that event the default settings in GA4 will measure events which will include not just pageviews, but also scrolls, video engagement, outgoing clicks, search queries and file downloads.

So what do you need to do?

Before 1 July 2023 you will need to ask your web developer to change your code to the new UA code. Unfortunately, you will only be able to access your historical data for 6 months and won’t be carried across to the new GA4 stats.

When to change to GA4?

We would recommend that members look to change their code as soon as possible. We all know we’ve got to change so we might as well get a head start on collecting data in the new GA4 system.

For members who have websites built by MWT, then this process will happen automatically over the next couple of months so there’s no need for you to do anything.
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If you have any questions or queries, please do not hesitate to get in touch with Zoe on 01654 702653 or email zoe@mwtcymru.co.uk  

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