GA4_Discover the Next Generation of Google Analytics

Discover the Next Generation of Google Analytics

What’s new with GA?

• Google Analytics 4 property is the news one. 
• ‘property’ means more than just for App + Web.

 

What’s a Google Analytics property

 

A property = where company’s online data goes to get processed in GA

 

Past

In the Past, there were only two kinds of properties.

• Universal Analytics: measuring website
• GA for Firebase : measuring for app activity

Now

GA4 property can collect both types of data.

 

A Google Analytics account can include multiple properties and property types, but a property can belong to only one Analytics account.

 

Universal Analytics properties: Also known as UA properties, this is the term for the existing web-only Analytics property type.

 

Google Analytics 4 properties: Also known as GA4 properties, this Analytics property type can process data from both websites and apps. Plus it has many new features for all Analytics users.

 

Note that in the past, there was a separate property type, called Google Analytics for Firebase, which was only for apps, but now these properties have been upgraded to GA4 properties.

과거에는 파이어베이스(앱), UA(웹) 이 두 가지 프로퍼티로 웹+앱 데이터 분석을 했다. 하지만 현재는 Google Analytics4가 이 두가지를 모두 커버할 수 있다. GA4를 사용하면 된다.

Benefits of GA 4 Properties

1. Scale with your business: 
2. Adapts to changing environment
3. Reveals intelligent business insights
4. Helps you achieve your marketing goals

 

Integrated reporting

1.  Full reporting across devices: Enable to focus on user’s single journey not duplicated journey. Deduplicate so avoid user’s visits across data from different devices.
2. Unified web and app reporting: reports together 
3. Integrated reporting and analysis

 

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What sets Google Analytics 4 properties apart

GA4 properties vs. UA properties

 

	Universal Analytics properties	Google Analytics 4 properties
Measurement	Session-based data model	Flexible event-based data model
Reporting across devices and platforms	Limited	Full
Automation	Limited	Machine learning throughout to improve and simplify insight discovery

 

More differences

Audiences

‘An audience is a set of users you defined based on different attributes that are important to your business’.

Your business can create IDs for signed-in users. You can define your audiences on IDs sent to Analytics to create audiences based on signed-in users.

Advanced features available to all Analytics accounts

• Explorations: use many techniques like funnel exploration, path exploration, etc to get insights
• BigQuery Export: Export Analytics data to BigQuery to store data securely and combine with data sources.

How GA4 properties collect and process data

Rather than using a session-based model, which groups user interactions within a given time frame, GA4 uses an event based model that processes each user interaction as a standalone event.

The session-based model(UA)

• groups data into session
• A session is a group of user interactions with your website that take place within a give time frame
• During sessions, the model collects datas such as pageviews, events, and eCommerce transactions, etc.

The event-based model(GA4)

• session data still available
• collect user interactions as events such as pageviews, button click, user actions, etc.
• It focuses on user’s action and context such as value of purchase, the title of the page, etc.

Benefits of the event-based model

• more flexible, scalable, faster custom calculation

 

Identity spaces in GA

GA use several user identifiers.

 

Identity spaces for understanding user journey

1. User-ID: creating persistent IDs for signed-in users, you can use this data to accurately measure user journeys across devices.
2. Google signals: uses data from users who are signed in to Google. data from user’s sharing.
3. Device ID: device ID comes from user’s device browser.

 

Identity spaces in UA vs in GA4

 

In UA,

reporting heavily relies on device ID. Datas does not integrate with other identity spaces so that it is hard to track user journeys across devices.

 

But in GA4, 

User-ID, Google signals, Device ID all available. 

• First, Analytics looks for User-ID because this feature uses the data you collect. Next, Google signals and finally, relies on the device ID if there is no match.

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Get to Know Google Analytics 4 Properties

 

In the latest Google Analytics experience, both Reports and Explorations use machine learning to make your data more meaningful, accessible, and actionable.

 

report type

• Summary reports
• Realtime report

 

Explorations

• Free form exploration

• Funnel exploration: visualize steps your users take toward a key task or conversion. helps you identity sequences of key events and understand how users navigate steps. You can define 10 steps in your funnel. There are two types of funnel, closed funnels(user must enter from the first funnel) and open funnels(user can enter at any point)
• Path exploration: understand how people progress from one stage to the next. While Funnel exploration analyse predefined path, Path exploration tracks free-flowing journey. EX) You can find where user loop(stuck in certain point)
• Segment overlap: enable to overlap up to 3 users segments and know relationship between each other.
• User exploration: select specific groups of users and learn more about those. Good to get idea to personalize the user experience.
• Cohort exploration: Cohort is a group of users who share a common characteristic identified in this report by a specific event the user has triggered.

Create Your Own Google Analytics 4 Property

Structure of Analytics property

Introducing data streams

Data streams are a feature of GA4 properties that allow you to connect a single Analytics property to the various places where your users interact with your business.