It is surprising to see that many professionals haven’t started learning GA4 yet. During some interviews and discussions with the professionals, one of the common reasons behind not yet thoroughly learning GA4 that came up was the significant change in the interface.
GA4 indeed has changed the entire interface. It has changed how we used to access the data, the navigation options, filters, graphs, reports, and many other things. But one of the crucial factors that everyone is missing is how GA4 records the data.
GA4 has an event-based model. Each event has user properties and parameters. Each GA4 property can have a maximum of 500 unique events that can be tracked in it.
This means, how we track and store those events across multiple platforms is essential for large websites. While preparing the setup, we also need to take care of the parameters that we send to GA4 so we will be able to analyze the data better.
In Universal Analytics, we could easily track conversions based on page views or events. Since there is a limit to the number of events that can be tracked in GA4, the careful selection of events and tracking of the data related to those events in a structured manner has become essential. A clear understanding of what comes under dimension and metrics, and even in that differentiating event parameters and user properties is important, else you will end up recording data in an incorrect manner.
GA4 is supposed to be far better than Universal Analytics. I see the value it adds to the business. But that value can be noticed only if the data is sent to GA4 in a structured and correct format. This means that to set up a GA4 property for complex websites where analytics play an important role, you need people from Marketing and Technology, and in some cases, BI guys will also be required. They all have to work together to ensure that all the stakeholders understand the requirements related to analytics, the structure is placed as per the requirements, and the setup is tested/validated to ensure the correctness of the output from GA4.
One should not forget about the data retention policies in GA4. And, if the historic data of the users’ behavior in your apps play an important role in your business, you have to implement an ETL functionality that will extract and store data in your own database so it can be accessed later.
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