A more comprehensive understanding of how customers interact with your business

For example, you can see if customers first discover your business from an ad on the web, and later install your app and make purchases there.

How do I integrate my existing data into Google Analytics 4?

The new Google Analytics interface

Now that you have created the new property and set up your first data stream, you can already examine data in the new interface.

The layout is completely new and very intuitive.

Advantages of Google Analytics 4

Cross Devide Tracking

If you use a website & APP, you can now collect this data in a property without creating a “roll-up” property for it. Also, the accuracy of the data is better.

Advanced Analytics Reports

In Google Analytics 4, non-Analytics 360 customers now also get the option to use the analytics area.

Free Big Query Connector

You can link your Google Analytics to Big Query for free, which gives you many new ways to analyze data. (SQL queries from your RAW data)

Automatic tracking of specific event types

All clicks on external links, scrolling behavior, file downloads and video engagement are automatically tracked without your intervention. (if you activate it during setup)

Debugging possibility directly in Google Analytics

Direct possibility to test your data & configurations.

New engagement metrics for more accurate tracking

The usual bounce rate from Universal Analytics no longer exists in Google Analytics 4. (Must be added manually)

This was replaced by the engagement rate . As a rule of thumb, you could say that 30% bounce rate equals about 70% engagement rate. So the inverted bounce rate.

The new event + parameter model in GA4

GA4 Properties now uses the new Event + Parameter measurement model instead of the Session + Pageview model used in Universal Analytics.

This means that GA4 now tracks user activity based on events. You can now even create your own custom events with relative ease.

Sources: https://blog.google/products/marketingplatform/analytics/new_google_analytics/

How do I create custom definitions in GA4?

Custom definitions are the most important foundation for your web analytics with Google Analytics 4. As explained in the article above, GA4 works using events. For each action of your users, an event is generated and sent to GA4. 

The simplest of all events is the page call (page_view). In your Analytics interface you will find all the events that already exist. 

The easiest way to navigate is via Reports | Engagement | Events there you will find all events already defined.

Now it is important that you are clear about what additional events you would like to generate. A reasonable selection would be the following:

• Request sent -> generate_lead
• Clicks on emails & phone -> generate_email & generate_call
• Newsletter registration -> generate_newsletter

The easiest way to create these events is via Google Tag Manager by creating a new tag and creating the desired event.

To do this, perform the following steps:

1. Open your Google Tag Manager
2. Create a new tag (Google Analytics: GA4 event)
3. Select your GA4 configuration day
4. Fill the event name -> e.g. generate_lead
5. Define event parameters (important for user-defined definitions)
   1. This allows you to send additional parameters to GA4 with each event. This is a very useful feature to distinguish e.g. different request forms with only one event. To do this, simply define a parameter with the name lead_type and write the name of the request form as the value.
6. Define triggers -> For a form, it would be the successful submission.
7. You are done and the data can now be found under Events in your Google Analytics 4.

To make the newly defined parameters also visible in GA4, you must now create them as a user-defined definition. To do this, navigate to Administration | Custom Definitions.

Once there, simply click the blue button and create your new dimension. It is important here that you then assign a meaningful name there and define the area.

A distinction is made between:

• Event -> is regenerated and counted on each occurrence.
• User -> is useful for events that trigger statically or very rarely. z. e.g. the login of a user.

As a final step, you just need to select the desired event parameter. In our example, it would be the lead_type . As a result, you can now view these values in reports. Without these steps this is not possible!

Questions and answers