The Google Analytics 4 Update: What It Is, and How It Will Affect Your Business

On July 1st, 2023, Universal Analytics will be no more, and Google Analytics 4 will rise to take its place. When this change happens, your dental website will need to be migrated over to this new platform. So, what can you expect from this move, and how is it going to affect your business? Will you have to do anything different following the update, or can you continue on more or less as normal?

At InTouch, we’re already preparing our website clients for the change. Here’s what you need to know about Google Analytics 4 (GA4) and what to expect when your website makes the move.

Google Analytics 4

What is GA4?

For starters, GA4 is the next-gen upgrade from Universal Analytics (UA), which provides you with detailed reporting about your website’s activity and performance. A key characteristic of this property is that it collects event-based data from not just websites, but also applications. While it is mostly the same as UA, there are some notable new features and changes that might make you wonder how you ever did without them.

What Does GA4 Do Differently from UA?

While not dramatically different from Universal Analytics, GA4 does have some differences that should provide a better performance tracking and reporting experience for you.  

This includes the following improvements/features:

  • Better cross-device tracking of visitors to your website (this means whatever device a person is using to view and interact with your site; it will be tracked)

  • Tracking of the behaviors users engage in when they’re on your site, with the ability to work around cookie-tracking limitations

  • Better tracking of website events and conversions – every click, scroll, pageview, etc. is now counted and tracked as an event

  • With GA4, you can track as many as 300 events and 30 conversions in a single data stream

  • GA4 uses predictive modeling to determine conversions on your website

dentist marketing online

The Benefits of GA4

Once your website migrates to GA4, you will not notice any dramatic changes to your reporting, but there will be improvements in several key areas. First, you’ll be able to pull more data with GA4. The more data you have, the better you can see how your dental website is performing. You’ll be able to learn more about the behaviors of visitors to your website and make any necessary adjustments to your digital marketing to increase conversions and increase the success of your business.

In addition, GA4 allows for more customizations to your dashboard, so you can track the metrics that are most important to your business. GA4 also offers updated metrics such as engagement time and engaged sessions to show how long visitors are staying on and interacting with your website. Under UA, pageviews were treated as the most important metric, but now you’ll have additional metrics to build a more detailed and complete profile of the customer journey on your website. Other metrics include predicted revenue and probability of purchase.

Another benefit of GA4 is that it allows you to view the whole customer journey, from acquisition to retention.

Don’t Sweat the Great GA4 Migration

If you’re an InTouch client and you’re concerned about losing data or having to move your website over yourself, you can relax! InTouch will help you move your website over and you won’t lose any data in the process. All you have to do is what you already do – serve your patients with outstanding dental care and services.

GA4 improves upon UA in many ways, but you won’t have to worry about a learning curve. It takes what made UA great and makes it even better, so you can improve your marketing and grow your business even more.

To learn more about GA4 and what to expect when your website is migrated over, get InTouch today by calling (877) 493-9003!