Cookies Preferences
“To help you get better ROI from your marketing for the long term, we’re creating a new, more intelligent Google Analytics that builds on the foundation of the App + Web property we introduced in beta last year."
It has machine learning at its core to surface helpful insights automatically and gives you a complete understanding of your customers across devices and platforms.”
The core reports that we’re used to have new names and a meaning that is central to the customer lifecycle. The new lifecycle reports are specifically designed to aid how we report on and drill down into user and customer journies. We are no longer limited by channel when seeing how users are acquired, the new version of Analytics can give us a full picture as to how customers interact with digital products across devices through unique user IDs that we can provide. Google has also created ‘Google Signals‘ for GA4 that will deduplicate users across devices meaning marketers can start to optimise ad spend based on cross-device usage and publishers can report more accurately on the number of users instead of devices.
Drill down into the customer journey using the four core reports. see what channels are acquiring new customers, use the engagement and retention reports to understand the actions these customers take, and whether they stick around, after converting.
Measure on-page actions like page scrolls or video plays without event code or Google Tag Manager. As Shopify backend customisation is limited, you may not be able to implement Ecommerce tracking until Shopify themselves develop it.
Machine learning can get cooler… Google Analytics 4 automatically shows us data trends and the technology can predict outcomes like potential revenue from a certain segment of customers.
Create and manage audience lists in GA 4 across the Web and App properties. For example: If a user qualified for an audience list due to an action taken on the Web and then the user completed a purchase within the App, GA4 will automatically update the list to remove the user so that they’re not retargeted with ads.
Google have developed their own model for privacy that offers separate consent opt-ins for Analytics and Ads. They’ve also given businesses more control over data deletion to comply with user requests without harming data collection.
As third-party cookies are phased out, Google anticipates that data sparsity will become the new norm. It will rely on machine learning to fill in the data gaps.
Shopify merchants are still waiting for an updated method of implementing the new version as the UA- code has been deprecated by GA4 and while we can still reap the benefits of Google Analytics 4, Shopify merchants cannot set up enhanced e-commerce tracking just yet. Apps and workarounds have been created to allow for a full integration but as GA4 still uses many alpha/beta features, we would recommend waiting for updated implementation from Shopify themselves.
There is a set-up assistant within the admin section of Universal Analytics that will walk you through the best way to get started with Google Analytics 4 based on your current implementation. If you are a Shopify Merchant and use Google Tag Manager, adding the Google Analytics 4 tag with the all pages trigger will be the easiest way to get started.
Need some help getting your head round things? Let's chat!
Chris has been at the forefront of eCommerce and a pioneer of online retailing since the early 00s. A 5-time Drapers Award winner, Chris has extensive experience in developing fashion brands online.
Chris founded Cake in 2016. Based in Birmingham, with offices nationwide, Cake specialises in helping fashion brands understand their market online and then helps to develop appropriate strategical direction to achieve their plan, all backed by his 20 years of operating in the retail market.
