Google Analytics 4 migration is necessary for companies to benefit from new features. Marketers must consider it to update data privacy, reporting, and tracking customer data.
Google announced updates for Google Analytics 4 (GA4) features recently. The features are a major improvement for the behavioral modeling reports, a new homepage design, Setup Assistant, and customization features.
New Features to Find in Google Analytics 4
1. Predictive Analytics
Google Analytics 4 is a major combination of machine learning and artificial intelligence. The advanced version of these technologies makes them more valuable and helpful. AI and ML gather the necessary data to create predictive audiences for purchases.
The analytics analyzes data and predicts future actions that customers or visitors make. The predictive metrics work for both applications and websites. It predicts Purchase Probability and Churn Probability.
These metrics will drive business growth by reaching likely customers ready to buy. Also, they will retain customers who might not return to apps or websites for purchases.
Furthermore, the advanced AI and ML-based analytics will suggest new predictive audiences created under Audience Builder. Predictive audiences automatically identify customer actions on apps or websites going to make a purchase. These kinds of leads are likely to convert at scale.
Marketers can analyze customer activity with this GA4 feature with the Analysis module. They can use the User Lifetime method to identify marketing campaigns that attract users with the top Purchase Probability.
2. Build Custom Reports
Universal Analytics provided access to custom dashboards. However, they were not very comprehensive. Google Analytics 4 gets access to Explorations, which allows for creating custom reports.
Through Explorations, marketers can gain deeper insights into users’ buying journeys. Explorations work beyond creating standard reports. These use advanced techniques to gather customer behavior insights.
Marketers can use Explorations to:
- Perform extra queries faster
- Segment and configure data
- Focus on relevant data through segments and filters
- Create audience bases based on data segments
- Export Exploration data in other tools to use
Explorations also create visualizations of paths, funnels, or segments to understand data better. Using it, marketers can create custom reports and make data-driven marketing decisions.
Besides, the new feature of GA4 provides other types of reports. For example, pathing reports that show the user flow across the website. The user flow reports in GA allow businesses to test as they are very rigid.
The new pathing reports allow marketers to view Events or Pages easily. This is how marketers can do other kinds of pathing analysis.
3. New Homepage Designs
The best Google Analytics 4 feature comes for designing new responsive homepages. The designs will have customized options according to the business needs. Companies migrating to GA4 can get more historical data and insights into visitors.
The new properties will connect to Universal Analytics to match privacy and data collection settings. Companies can have new homepage designs with personalization for customers.
This will highlight key trends, real-time behavior, and the most viewed page reports. Companies can use ML to find trends for advertisers to gain insights on the homepage.
4. Better Integration of Google Ads
Google Analytics 4 integrates with Google Ads. Advertisers and marketers can track customers from their engagement levels with ads. GA4’s feature provides a holistic view of customers’ experiences from websites, social media platforms, and application interactions.
They can also increase ads’ exposure rates through YouTube videos, emails, and paid marketing channels. This will help marketers to track conversions and create more targeted marketing campaigns.
GA4 exports audience segments to use them for Google Ads. By this, it streamlines the targeting of different users according to their demographics.
5. Integration of Google BigQuery
The previous Universal Analytics API was limited to exporting data. However, companies had paid Google Marketing Platform products versions. Google Analytics 4 allows companies to export raw analytics data directly to BigQuery.
From BigQuery, marketers can export data to their own data warehouse. They can combine the data with internal business processes to enhance functionalities. This feature was earlier limited to Google Analytics 360. The new Google Analytics 4 features are enterprise-level offerings.
6. New Trended Funnels
Users can create trended funnels. The new feature lets users track each funnel step with a graphical representation. They can view how funnels respond and change and the elements that affect the trajectory.
The new feature also shows to create open or closed funnels. With an open funnel, marketers can allow access at any step of the process. In comparison, a closed funnel allows access in a single step.
Besides, the new version provides data at a time between the steps in the funnel. Marketers need to enable the ‘Show Elapsed Time’ checkbox to get this data.
In the existing version of Analytics, measuring the time between steps in funnels was difficult. For example, how long does it take a user to access data from the website? How to identify the time between selecting a product and its purchase?
Furthermore, the newer version gives access to view the user’s next action on the funnel. Marketers can use the data to track user journeys easily.
7. Track Multiple Conversions at Once
Conversion tracking in Google Analytics 4 is more effortless than event tracking. After marketers track the event in GA4, they can mark it as a conversion.
In Universal Analytics, marketers only have access to track limited conversions. However, the new features allow marketers to track multiple conversions at once. They can even delete wasted conversions or those not serving good results.
Also Read: Efficiencies and Challenges of Marketing Data Analytics
8. Marketers Should Care for New GA4 Features
Google has promised to keep rolling out GA4 improvements. The Setup Assistant change will migrate data from Universal Analytics to GA 4. The future changes are big add-ons to the new analytics version.
What Next in GA4 Features?
GA4 is still rolling out accessible features for brands and marketers to work on for their upcoming digital marketing plans.
Google Search Console integration and website speed metrics will be more accessible. With more features, brands must use GA4 to gain relevant data with reports.
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