If you haven’t switched to GA4 yet, now is the time – In 87 days, Google will drop Universal Analytics

There’s no reason to panic yet.

There are 87 days left.

Let’s first clarify why you need it and what steps you need to take.

What is Universal Analytics?
Universal Analytics is the older version of Google Analytics. It was used for tracking website visits and user actions. It helped site owners understand visitor behaviour by recording data like page views and visitor sessions.

Google has phased out Universal Analytics in favour of Google Analytics 4 (GA4), and will stop the service completely on July 1st 2024. It stopped registering new data on July 1st in 2023.

What is GA4?
GA4 (Google Analytics 4) is simply a new improved version of Universal Analytics. It is however based on a different platform, so it requires migration not just a simple upgrade. If you have data from the past months/years that you want to keep hold of to measure year-on-year performance, that data will need to be migrated.

GA4 focuses more on privacy, tracks users across platforms, and uses machine learning to provide insights. It is smarter than its predecessor and is designed to offer a more modern approach to understanding user interactions online. This important change will affect all users of Google Analytics.

Here are 4 reasons to get in touch with us to get GA4 up and running for you:

• You run an eCommerce site and you want to improve your traffic and sales
• You launched a new site but haven’t got round to working on generating traffic and leads from it
• You want to understand what is working on your website so that you can do more of it
• Your marketing team need more data to make informed decisions

Who needs to make the change from Universal Analytics to GA4?
In essence, if you have a website that is important to your business in terms of generating leads and getting people to buy your products or get in touch with you, it is likely you need to make this change.

If your website is part of your marketing strategy, you need to measure your performance and create marketing reports, so we would certainly recommend moving to GA4 and also migrating your old data to the new platform.

Looking Ahead
This transition is not just a technical change but an opportunity to leverage more advanced analytics features that GA4 offers. It’s also a chance to re-evaluate and enhance your current analytics setup to better meet your business goals.

We understand that changes like this can be daunting. We are here to guide you through every step of the way. For any questions or assistance with migrating to GA4, please feel free to reach out to us on www.9hdigital.com/contact

Let’s embrace this change as an opportunity for growth and business improvement.