Google Analytics 4: Google Announces New Reporting Features and Changes

While Google Analytics has been put through a series of updates through the years, it still cannot seem to keep up with the pace. More than half of marketing decision-makers and advertising agencies say that their Google analytics solution lacks machine learning and automation capabilities key to marketing success. With a hope to close this gap, Google announced their latest update, the “Google Analytics 4 (GA4)”, which features expanded predictive insights, customer lifecycle reporting, deeper integration with Google Ads, and other advanced capabilities to keep up with consumer behavior and new data regulations.

Google Analytics 4 expands the “App + Web” system initially released in 2019 and focuses heavily on cross-channel data, which seamlessly allows it to track users across websites, software, and apps. Here are some key takeaways of GA4’s new reporting features and changes

New left-hand navigation menu

Google has announced that GA4 will feature a new left-hand navigation menu, explicitly designed to make it easier for users to quickly and intuitively navigate different reports for their use case. Each section is dedicated to a particular use case, and these sections are called “Workspaces.”

Expanded conversion modeling

The GA4 will be extending the conversion modeling across specific reports. It has not been specified which reports will be able to utilize the modeled data or whether marketers have the option to cop-out. The modeled data aims to fill reporting gaps from visitors who have not consented to cookie tracking.

 More flexible reporting 

The G4 allows users with admin access to curate the Analytics interface, meaning people can expand a panel on the left that might, in turn, develop key dimensions and metrics. This flexible reporting feature allows users to customize their reports as if – not only for custom reports except for the default reports. The goal of this is to permit users to seek out the insights that they have much quicker. 

Data-driven attribution modeling

The GA4 properties also will make data-driven attribution available, and there will be two new reports. One is the conversion paths report, and the second is the model comparison report. The conversion paths report is almost the same as the report that Universal Analytics users are conversant in, which allows watching the complete consumer path across various channels. The new conversion paths report in GA4 also includes conversion credit visualization to assist marketers in understanding their value and, ultimately, ROI by channel. 

On the other hand, the model comparison report allows marketers to match various attribution models to ascertain the impact on multiple channels.

The advertising Snapshot

The new report includes the “Advertising Snapshot,” which could be a dashboard offering multi-channel conversion paths, conversion volumes by channel, along with an attribution model comparison graph. The ­report provides a look at a breadth of data for quick reviews. However, it will not include the depth of data that most are familiar with from Universal Analytics.

Reporting on customer lifecycle

The new Analytics offers customer-centric measurements rather than measurements divided by the platform or device. GA4 also shifts how data is shown and focuses on how users engage with a business across different channels and devices. This will allow you to understand your customers better and what makes them play across their entire lifecycle- that is, from the first visit to conversion and retention.

As you can see, when it comes to Google Analytics 4, there are quite a few features and benefits offered. So try to embrace these new features to help you improve your SEO efforts.