Tracking the performance of your website is the only way to know what’s working, what isn’t, and how you can improve moving forward. Google Analytics has long been the standard for tracking activity on your site, and that doesn’t seem like it will change anytime soon. What has changed, however, is the platform itself, as Google Analytics 4 has recently been released and is in the process of replacing the Universal Analytics platform that has been used for many years by millions of sites.

• Event-based data collection. Perhaps the biggest change, and one that can be a little tricky to understand, is the shift toward measuring everything in terms of events. Previously, it was sessions that served as the core of Universal Analytics, and user actions like pageviews happened within those sessions. That has changed with GA4, so that now everything that happens on your site will be recorded as an event.
• Website + App data in a single property. Universal Analytics collects mobile-specific screenviews in distinct mobile-specific properties, whereas GA4 aggregates web and app data in a single property. If you are tracking both web and app data in GA4, make sure to account for the additional app traffic when comparing pageview metrics between the two.
• Easier to use (especially for power users). This one will be music to the ears of countless business owners and managers who have struggled for years to get UA to do what they needed. While it was a powerful tool in its own right, UA could be complex for those who don’t work with it all day, every day. GA4 promises an easier user experience for the business owner who wants to sort through the data to pull out useful insights. For power users, with GA4, exports from BigQuery are made accessible to all properties (for UA, this was limited to Analytics 360 properties). This allows you to transmit unprocessed events to BigQuery, which can subsequently be queried using SQL. If your usage of the function stays inside the BigQuery sandbox constraints, the function is free to use.
• Bounce rate is gone! Well, kinda. It exists in a new form called “engagement rate” and is calculated differently in GA4. In UA, the percentage of website users who did not view more than one page on your website was calculated as “bounce rate.” In GA4, engagement rate is the percentage of engaged sessions on your website or mobile app. An engaged session is a session that lasts longer than 10 seconds, has a conversion event, or has at least 2 pageviews or screenviews.
• Account > Property > View is now just Account > Property. GA4 only has two components: account and property. This means that a Google Analytics 4 property has no views. In GA4, Google also introduced a completely new concept: data streams. A data stream represents the flow of information from your website or app to Analytics. Whereas Universal uses a tracking ID to collect data at the property level, GA4 uses a unique data stream ID to collect data at the stream level.
• “Explore” reports. GA4’s new Explore reports allow you to go well beyond the platform’s default report options. To learn specifics about the efficiency of your website or app, you can build your own specialized assessments. Filters and segments allow you to fine-tune your analyses to build highly customized reporting with the precise data sets you want to assess. GA4 comes stocked with templates to get you headed in the right direction.
• Peeking into the future. In GA4, there is also a greater emphasis on planning for the future as opposed to merely analyzing the past. Leveraging the power of AI to predict visitor behavior moving forward, there is a lot to be learned in the Predictive Metrics section of this tool.

One of the things you are likely to enjoy about GA4 is the way it can be customized to collect and report the data that is most important to your business. Every organization is unique, and you are likely to have data needs that vary from those operating in other industries. Of course, data collection and reporting start on a foundation of the basics, so everyone who installs GA4 will be collecting standard statistics like page views, the first page visited, etc. Also, you’ll be able to see when your site is searched and what it was searched for, as well as what clicks took visitors away from your site.

While necessary for an accurate view of your site, things like page views aren’t exactly new or particularly exciting. What is a bit more interesting and powerful, however, is the ability to create up to 500 custom tracking events within your GA4 account. For example, you could build a custom event to track how items listed in your menus are clicked by site users. This may help you better understand if your menus are working effectively to get people to the pages they want to visit.

Building custom events does take some practice and a bit of technical know-how, so you could reach out to a professional for help if you want to build specific events that will capture valuable site data for your business.