For the past several months we have been preparing our clients for the transition from Google's Universal Analytics,  which has served the industry well for the past several years to the new GA4 Analytics. Well it finally came, in mid July,  Universal Analytics stopped collecting data and if you hadn't prepared for the migration properly you were left without any data and needed to hit the panic button!

For smaller websites who really only need to track visitor numbers and not much more the migration is straight forward but for several of our clients who need to track performance in detail and to measure traffic sources,  attribution of sales and enquiries from advertising campaign, SEO and Social Media this was much more complicated.

Google GA4 is very different from its predecessor,  but once set up correctly,  with the necessary new tracking code and Tags set up on your website (easiest installed using Google Tag Manager) does yield greater insights and ultimately provides better standard and custom reports to help clients run their businesses.

If you feel you need some help getting to grips with GA4 there are some self help online courses available from Google  and the Chartered Institute of Marketing is offering virtual courses from £475 starting end of August 2023.

It is a fact however that GA4 requires a good deal of technical knowledge and support to set up and has clearly been designed by Google to support larger clients with access to greater resources and deeper pockets.  The little guy may have lost some of the information that was routinely available from the now defunct Universal Analytics and may feel somewhat abandoned!  If you need some help please get in touch.