5 Common Questions about GA4 and your eCommerce store
A lot changes in eCommerce and digital marketing, very quickly. When you're managing an eCommerce business, it can be hard to find the time to keep up with new platforms such as Google Analytics 4, even when we know they'll be integral to our business in the future. I asked a few clients and colleagues what their top questions on GA4 were and I'm here to answer them for you, in a short read.
1. What's GA4 all about?
GA4 is the latest version of Google Analytics which was released in October 2020. A few months ago, Google announced it will be sunsetting Universal Analytics (also known as 'UA') by June 2023. This means Universal Analytics will literally stop recording your data in less than 12 months.
GA4 is an entirely new platform and will not be able to import your historical data retrospectively (much to our dismay), so unless you enjoy manually comparing year on year data, I strongly recommend you get setup on GA4 as soon as possible.
2. What's new on GA4?
Aside from being an entirely new platform and dashboard, there are some major differences between GA4 and the UA you know and love:
Event-based data model: UA data is built around sessions or 'hits' to your store and event tracking was just an add on. Now GA4 is all about events - views, adds to cart, purchases - even a session is now its own event.
User ID tracking: This new data model gives GA4 a better ability to track a single user across multiple sessions and multiple channels. It's better at identifying genuine first time visitors and where they initially came from, to give you more accurate picture of the customer journey.
Engagement metrics - Say goodbye to bounce rate - we now have a new metric which measures how engaged a user is through key behaviours such as the time actively on the page. Imagine a user scrolling Google Shopping with multiple tabs open - this will give us such better insights into true engagement rates.
New focus on Lifetime Value & AI based insights - GA4 has a whole report dedicated to retention metrics, as well as predictive analytics that allow you to create audiences based on purchase and churn probability to sync to Google Ads and other platforms.
3. How do I get setup on GA4?
Initial integration with GA4 is as simple as copy/pasting a few codes to your store's <head> and <footer> BUT if you want the full integration of full eCommerce events and data parameters that really power the insights of GA4, you'll need something beefier.
If you're on Shopify, there is not currently a native integration for GA4 and Shopify is typically quiet on when that will be released. Does this mean you should wait? Absolutely not - the longer you wait to integrate GA4, the less data you'll have to work with when learning this new platform before the cutoff period and the longer you'll need to wait until you can make automated year on year comparisons.
The only way to fully integrate GA4 is through Google Tag Manager - with over 60 tags to setup, I'd recommend not having your developer trawl through documentation. Third parties such as Analyzify and Elevar install GTM containers that can get you up and running in a matter of days and I highly recommend exploring these options.
If you're on Magento, Commerce Cloud or WooCommerce, I don't believe there are native integrations yet. There may be plugins available on your marketplaces or you will need to find a GTM expert to setup a container for your store.
4. Can I still use Google Data Studio with GA4?
Thankfully yes you can, and I suspect you'll be relying on it a whole lot more in the initial setup before you get your hands dirty in GA4's new reporting formats.
If you use Data Studio currently you'll still have some work to do in transferring your data sources and switching out metrics you previously relied on, but this is relatively easy. For metrics like Conversion Rate, GA4 doesn't have it (yet) so you'll need to setup a custom metric in Data Studio.
Comparing data between UA and GA4 in Data Studio is a bit tricky and if you require this to be automated, you may need to integrate a data warehouse (eg. BigQuery) or Google Sheets exports from UA to make this work.
5. What will happen to my Universal Analytics account?
As of July next year, your Universal Analytics account will stop gathering data and Google has indicated they'll only provide 6 months' worth of historical data. So it's important that you not only migrate to GA4 as soon as possible, but that you also start exploring ways to export your UA data so you have it on file for comparisons.
There are a few ways to do this that I'm currently exploring, including exporting data manually as a CSV, exporting data using the Google Sheets integration as well as exporting to a data warehouse such as BigQuery, which can then be imported into Data Studio for manipulation.
Want to learn more? My newest online course GA4 for eCommerce launches in the coming weeks! Sign up here to for first access.