Worried About Your Organization’s Ability To Support A GA4 Migration?
These 4 steps will prepare your business for a change to GA4.
Making the change to GA4 from your current Google Analytics setup is something that you’ll need to do before Google shutters Universal Analytics (UA) in July. It’s a good idea to start tracking data in GA4 as soon as you can, but what if you have questions about your business’ ability to support the change? If you have concerns about your team, your programs, or the way you are currently tracking data through Google Analytics, this checklist can help ensure you’re ready for GA4, and make the transition a little smoother.
1. Assign a dedicated resource to make decisions and quickly execute/sign contracts, if needed.
Even if it’s just for the duration of the switch to GA4, assigning someone the ability to give approvals as they are needed will make the process much smoother. You’ll eliminate many of the elements of a project like this that create unpredictable delays that impact turnaround times and overall efficiency. In our experience, project holdups happen most often when there are multiple layers of approvals needed to publish configuration changes or update user permissions.
Is your organization ready to make the change? Find out with our free, interactive quiz:
2. Check your current setup to ensure you CAN do the things you want to do in GA4.
There's a big difference between UA and GA4 in terms of how they measure your website performance and visitor engagement. Make sure the metrics you want to track are set up correctly in your Google Analytics profile, because any problems with your current UA setup will potentially create even bigger ones as you shift to GA4. Ensure that elements like Google Tag Manager are properly installed on your website so your migration doesn’t require extra work (and time).
Free GA4 Migration Planner
Worried that a broken or incomplete infrastructure might make your switch to GA4 difficult? We can take a look and let you know where we see potential issues and how to make it work!
Use this GA4 Migration Planner to see what you might be missing.
3. Get your Marketing and Sales goals aligned to make the most of the new features in GA4.
If you don’t already have a good understanding of how your sales and marketing efforts are working together to help you reach your business goals, you may not see the full benefits of GA4. Look for common intersections or handoff points between sales and marketing, and consider the ideal path a visitor to your website would take before becoming a customer or lead. Your new GA4 instance will allow you to easily visualize this path, which should help your marketing and sales teams better understand their respective roles (and where they can improve) when it comes to your website delivering new business.
4. Budget time to learn the new platform, and where to find and understand the metrics most important to your business.
If there are metrics that your team or business monitors on a regular basis, or there are functions in your existing GA instance that are necessary for your website to function as it should, you may need to learn where these things exist in the new GA4 view. A lot has changed, and finding some functions is a little more complicated, but most of those abilities still exist in GA4 as long as you know where to find them.
You may find the new features make some of your old systems of tracking data unnecessary, but until you know your way around, make sure you can continue to operate without breaking any of your current analytics practices.
If you have questions about making the change to GA4, or if you would like one of our experts to take a look at your current setup and show you how to get the same information (and more) from GA4, we’re here to help. Get in touch with us soon!
