Google finally launched their new product after many exciting months of bèta testing their App + Web property. Indeed, Google Analytics 4 is now the main property type in Google Analytics. If you are creating a new property today, you will end up with a GA4 property by default which will drastically increase the adoption rate. Of course, the classic GA property will still remain available for creation for at least some more time.
The product roadmap of GA4 is not public yet, but we know one thing: any future deployment or product improvements will only be implemented on GA4, bringing the development of your classic GA to a standstill. This means you need to familiarize yourself with GA4 better sooner than later.
But so, what is different about GA4? And how does it differ from App + Web?
First, GA4 is a different product than the classic GA in its essence. Here is everything you need to know about the important differences. We strongly recommend you to read through this article.
Now to answer the second question: fundamentally both App+Web and GA4 are the same product. App+Web was the name given to the bèta version of GA4. As the name was misleading - it enables you to do way more than just combining your website and app data - Google decided to rebrand the tool completely.
GA4 offers 2 major improvements
First off, Enhanced Ecommerce reporting is available!! We have been debugging our enhanced e-commerce implementation blindly for weeks in the old App + Web bèta but it’s finally there and ready to be used. At the moment you can easily keep your website’s Universal Analytics datalayer, so a transition is a no-brainer if you don’t want to miss the GA4 train. Keep in mind that in the long term it will be recommended to upgrade your datalayer towards the new GA4 specs, which is designed to be both more insightful and flexible.
Secondly, GA4 now offers a Data Studio connector! This enables you to easily turn your freshly received data into a proper visualization within your existing dashboards. We are keen to see the extra business insights this might bring us in the near future.
Other new features that were recently launched:
Below we have listed other key updates to GA4:
- The layout has been improved. Google gave ear to the feedback of some of its core customers as the updated layout looks more familiar with what we are used to. The biggest change in layout comes from the left navigation bar that has been divided into clusters more similar to the old version of GA.
- You now also have the opportunity to directly create new events from data already collected within the platform itself. This should improve flexibility a lot and allow the end-users to be more autonomous.
- Another cool in platform integration is the cross-domain measurement that can now be set-up directly from the UI. A real timesaver!
We expect way more to come in the near future as the product is fairly new and Google is pushing a lot of resources on this project.
Stay tuned to receive more updates.
Grégoire le Hardy
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