Have you already migrated to Google Analytics 4? If you haven’t already, it is recommended that you become familiar with the tool today. In fact, By July 1, 2023You will no longer have access to Universal Analytics, the current version of Google Analytics…
If the GA4 interface is confusing at first glance, you’ll quickly get used to it with a little practice. Furthermore, it seems that Google takes into account the feedback of its users as well. The tool evolves every month and receives more reports that seemed important to marketers and yet were initially missing in GA4. We’re thinking specifically of the famous report on landing pages, which was integrated as recently as December 2023.
If the basic migration is done in a few clicks thanks to the Google configuration tools, however there are options you should not forget to configure in order to collect your data correctly. We’ll look at three important settings at once for a successful transition to GA4.
Setting n°1: Exclude payment platform
This configuration is required when transacting on your site. This is especially the case with e-commerce stores. Before going into the details of configuration, it would be good to recall the notion of attribution.
conversion credit
To understand what attribution is, imagine you are responsible for an e-commerce site.
It’s a sales period and you decide to send out a newsletter with promotional offers. One of your customers clicks through and lands on your store. If he places an order, it will be considered that the newsletter has started selling.
Then we will say that Transaction is assigned on your email.
Attribution issue in Google Analytics
However, in practice, there is a subtlety. Let’s take our previous example and describe the process that leads to conversion.
You send a newsletter. A customer clicks through and lands on your store. He presses the “Buy” button to place the order and is redirected to a payment platform, say PayPal. In this case, for GA4, the conversion will be attributed to paypal.com
The solution, if your customers are redirected away from your website to complete their purchase, is to tell GA4 to ignore the payment gateway. In other words, you tell them not to count it as an interaction point that led to a conversion.
This feature is a bit hidden in Google Analytics 4, we’ll explore it in pictures.
- First go to Admin > Data Feeds > Select your site
- in parts “google tag”, click on “configure beacon settings”
- in parts ” Adjustment “, right click ” show all “
- You should now see More Settings. click on “List referrals to ignore”
5. You can add a full list of sites by selecting them in the left box “The domain of the referring site matches the regular expression”, Then navigate between the different sites by pointing in the box on the right.
From now on, you are assured that your transaction will not be credited to your payment platform.
Setting #2: Increase data retention time
One of the great features of Google Analytics 4 is the ability to create tons of custom reports. More ergonomic, but above all more advanced than the Universal Analytics version, these graphs and tables will be your best allies to explore your data from different angles.
The image below represents a custom graph to visualize a conversion funnel.
By default, these reports have up to two months of data history. This period is much shorter if you have a quarterly, half-yearly or annual analysis window. To work around this issue, when migrating to GA4, remember to rvation de xxvixxes donxxixxx́xx.
For him :
- Go to Admin > Data Settings > Data Retention;
- In “Retention of event data”Select 14 months.
Adjustment n°3: Connect your Google products to GA4
There’s a good chance that you work with Google products like Search Console, Google Ads, or Merchant Center. When migrating to Google Analytics 4, remember to associate its various products with your account.
Why associate your Google Accounts with GA4?
Connecting different Google entities to your GA4 property will give you more useful features and information for your business. Let us give some examples:
- search console : After joining GA4, you’ll be able to find all the keywords internet users typed in to find your site, as well as your best SEO pages, directly in your Analytics interface.
- google ads : The association will allow you to monitor the performance of your Google Ads campaigns in Google Analytics, among other things. Plus, you can even create advanced audiences from GA4 to use them in your remarketing campaigns.
- Google Merchant Center : By joining GA4, you’ll be able to track the performance of your free listing.
For ????, the process is quite simple:
- Go to Admin > Product Associations;
- Select the products you use and click Associate.
All you have to do is follow the on-screen pairing process and you’re done.
To finish
The settings presented in this article will allow you to take advantage of your new Google Analytics 4 assets. We also recommend that you follow the platform’s news to stay informed about new reports and functionalities that will be released. GA4 is far from being in its final stages, the sooner you get into it, the easier the skill level will be.
About the Author
Jude Lutonadio: Webmarketing Consultant, I support companies in their Google Ads acquisition strategy, but also in analyzing their data through Google Analytics 4.
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