As the transition from Universal Analytics to Google Analytics 4 is approaching (in July, your Universal Analytics will be inactive), we’ve created this checklist to help you prepare for the new features and updates.
Make sure your website is GA4 ready (via Google Tag or GTM)
- In the admin settings, check if your data is sending information to the GA4 property [ specialist support may be required if not working]
- Set up relevant links to Google products
- Ads and/or Search Ads 360/Display & Video 360
- *Search Console
- *Shopping Centre
- *BigQuery
- Configure your settings
- Attribution model (use Cross-Channel Data-Driven)
- Retrospective window (use maximum time unless you have a specific reason to narrow it down)
- *Enable key features of GA4,
- Google Signals to export audiences and cross-platform reporting
- Improved event measurement to automatically collect data about the user experience on your website.
- *Check that the events section is populated with everything you want to track [checking is available, re-populating/customizing may need specialist support]
- Mark relevant events as conversions
- Check that your purchase event data meets your expectations (especially in terms of revenue)
- Import your conversions from GA4 into Google Ads as secondary conversions to check the quality of their data. Aim to use these as your primary conversion actions before July 1st. [available]
- (There may be some people using the Google Ads tag with improved conversions who want to continue using it, which is perfectly fine)
- Create audiences as soon as possible to start collecting data before July 1st. If you create them after July 1st, they won’t be usable right away. (Note: maximum 100 audiences per GA4 property. However, you can always archive old audiences to create new ones) [available]
- Remarketing Audiences (eg) High Non-Purchasing / Cart Abandonment Audiences for Exclusion (eg) Recent Purchasers Reporting Audiences (for use with comparisons) (eg) Specific On-Site Follow-Ups, to monitor site flow
- *Access the report library to customize your GA4 interface [available]
- Check out the standard report templates. Some templates will be created based on your linked accounts (such as Search Console)
- Create custom reports that answer specific questions relevant to broader business goals. Keep them simple and short.
- Create collections in the report library – this allows you to group sets of reports together and they will be displayed in the navigation bar in a style similar to the Universal Analytics UI
- *Build tracing templates that will be useful for deeper analyses in the future (GA4’s limited testing!) [available]
- We highly recommend that eCommerce businesses build a simple survey to show revenue alongside the Default Channel Group or Source/Medium dimensions. Do not use the variants of these dimensions that have prefixes such as ” Session ” or ” User. “
- This research shows you revenue through the lens of GA4’s data-driven attribution, which provides a better view of the multi-session user journey than the last click.
- When using UA, you may have developed a habit of checking the channel group or source/carrier reports to review the performance of the grouped channel. In GA4, the main Session Acquisition report still uses data for recent non-direct clicks because it is session-scoped rather than event-scoped.
- Make sure you take full advantage of GA4’s attribution model.
- *If you understand and accept the privacy terms, set Google’s consent mode, which allows GA4 to start modelling data for users who refuse cookies. This is valuable information that can influence decision-making [expert]
- You can compare the modelled data to your actual overall business data to get a feel for the model’s accuracy
- Explore the different ways GA4 and UA calculate and display information [available]
If you have any questions or need a specialist to tune GA4 before the July 1st switchover, contact our team. For more Google Analytics 4 resources, click here.
