Google Analytics 4 – Get Ahead Of The Game!

If you are keeping up to date with your website analytics and performance, you will have seen this countdown either shared, pop up on your screen or sent across to you as a question over the last few months, but now the importance and the need for action is coming to fruition. 

Centred around providing more in-depth and transverse data throughout the entire customer lifecycle. making the switch from UA to GA4 may seem daunting although the benefits and future abilities of the solution far outweigh the initial frustration. 

Tracking Google Analytics is crucial for estate agents as it provides valuable insights into the performance of their online presence. By implementing Google Analytics on their website, agents can gather data on various metrics, enabling them to make informed decisions and improve their digital marketing efforts.

Firstly, Google Analytics helps estate agents understand their website traffic. It provides information on the number of visitors, their geographic location, and the source of their referral (such as organic search, paid advertisements, or social media). This data allows agents to assess the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns and determine which channels are driving the most traffic to their site.

Secondly, Google Analytics provides insights into user behavior on the website. Agents can analyze metrics like bounce rate, average session duration, and pages per session to understand how engaged visitors are with their content. This information helps identify areas where the website may need improvement, such as optimizing page load times or enhancing user experience, ultimately leading to higher user satisfaction and increased conversions.

Google Analytics 4 is centred around providing more data throughout the entire lifecycle of the customer journey, providing more indepth data regarding of levels of engagement, monetization and retention. Utilising advanced machine learning algorithms, enabling automatic event tracking and smarter insights, GA4 will allow you to visualise your current audience much clearer than previous aswell as allowing you to optimise your paid and offline marketing campaigns to the highest level.

Key Highlights of GA4:

• Uses events based data instead of session based: You can define events that are meaningful to your business, such as page views, clicks, video plays, or specific actions taken within your app. This flexibility allows you to track custom events and tailor your analytics to your specific needs.
• Includes privacy controls such as cookieless measurements, and behavioural and conversion modelling 
• Predictive capabilities offer guidance without complex models
• Direct integrations to media platforms to help drive actions on your website or app 
• Enhanced cross-device tracking: GA4 provides improved cross-device tracking capabilities, allowing you to understand how users interact with your website or app across different devices and channels. It enables you to track user behaviour seamlessly across mobile, desktop, and other devices, giving you a more complete view of the customer journey.

If you are wondering whether you will need to upgrade your account or not, the first question to ask yourself is did you sign up before October 14th 2020? If so you are probably using UA but if you signed up more recently you may already be using GA4. One way to clearly identify this is by looking at your property ID, if you need to upgrade to GA4 your ID will include a ‘UA-’ at the start of the number. 

Lets get started:

1. To use the GA4 Setup Assistant you need the ‘Editor Role’ for the account.
2. Click Admin, in the lower left
3. In the ‘Account’ column, make sure that your desired account is selected and select the Universal Analytics property that is currently collecting data for your site. 
4. In the Property Column, click GA4 Setup Assistant. This is the first option in the property column. 
5. Click ‘Get started’ under I want to create a new Google Analytics 4 property
6. In the Create a new Google Analytics 4 property pop-up screen, youll have one of the following options depending on how your site is currently tagged:

• Create and continue. Click this button to continue to the Set up a Google tag page (step 7).
• Create property. If you see this option, this means that Analytics can reuse your existing Universal Analytics tagging for your GA4 property. Analytics will create a connected site tag between your Universal Analytics and GA4 properties. Select this option and skip to the Next steps with your new GA4 property section (below).

7. On the Set up assistant of your GA4 property, click on the Not Started option to find your new data stream
8. Continue by pressing on your newly created property, viewing your new Google Tag at the bottom of your next screen.
9. This tag needs to be installed on your website, copy and paste it in the code of every page of your website, immediately after the <head> element. Don’t add more than one Google tag to each page.

If you are a current client of ours dont worry we have you covered! Although if you arent currently a client and are unsure on the next steps to take when it comes to switching over your accounts, contact us today and we will be happy to help! Alternatively, you can take a look at this easy to follow tutorial from Google themselves…