Data Availability

Even though it is stated as an “Upgrade" this is actually an additional GA4 property. This does not affect your existing analytics setup. Since, its a new separate property, it starts collecting data only once its implemented, it does not report the historic data collected in your existing version of GA. The sooner you implement this, the more historic data you will have with you.

No Sampling

With sampling, Universal Analytics reports a sample of data with minimum viable precision to support decision making. But, sampling confuses plenty of business users and stakeholders across teams. In GA4, there is no concept of sampling as such. GA4 property is a developed version of erstwhile Google Analytics web + app property. No sampling means you get more accurate data for driving your digital decisions. This greatly reduces confusions and also boosts the confidence of the teams with analytics.

Analysis Hub

Analysis Hub is the new reporting User Interface which was available only the premium version of Google Analytics – the GA360. With Analysis Hub its remarkable more easy to create reports on the fly and leverage them for advanced analysis and insights. You need to use it to experience it – Its very different.

Cookie Less Tracking

Official statement from Google : “Because the technology landscape continues to evolve, the new Analytics is designed to adapt to a future with or without cookies or identifiers. It uses a flexible approach to measurement, and in the future, will include modeling to fill in the gaps where the data may be incomplete. This means that you can rely on Google Analytics to help you measure your marketing results and meet customer needs now as you navigate the recovery and as you face uncertainty in the future."

Measurement Plan

Google Analytics 4 is an event based tracking setup. We need to pass custom event names and associated parameters that are eventually configured within the GA4 interface to populate the reports. This high flexibility if not structured properly can lead chaos later on. We hence created a thorough measurement plan in a spreadsheet specifying the parameters first that will be set in Google Tag Manager.

Creating Triggers

Most digital analytics implementation involve setting up first tags and then mapping triggers to them. We strongly believe in setting triggers first and then reusing the same triggers across multiple tags. This ensures there is consistency across the various marketing and analytics pixels as the same logical trigger is driving them all

Implementing tags

This step is logical culmination of the above two steps. What to implement was covered in step 1 and when to track was covered in step 2. The tags were created in Google Tag Manager with the new Google Analytics 4 settings and thoroughly tested in the new tag assistant.  

User ID

User ID tracking adds an additional layer of tracking website users by assigning them a custom ID instead of the default cookie ID. Since VohraWoundCare has one of its primary objectives as generation of recruitment applications, we used encrypted e-mail IDs as user IDs.

Automated validation

We worked with the Google Analytics APIs to report the email Ids in Google Sheets. We also worked with the APIs of CRM system to get the applications in the same Google Sheet. Next, we applied the same encryption logic on the CRM data to match it with the Google Analytics data. This system ensures that businesses is consistently monitoring the parity between GA and back-end and nipping discrepancies in bud if they arise

Team at DataVinci provided us with most updated version of Google Analytics in a very systematic manner. This implementation is highly valuable piece of our digital marketing stack.

– John Potter, Digital Marketing Leadership, Vohra Wound Physicians