Google Analytics 4 (GA4), the newest version of Google Analytics, takes analytics to a different level. Marketers can now leverage artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to track customer paths along several custom parameters across multiple channels. As per Google, using GA4, you can measure traffic and engagement across BOTH websites and apps.
The evolved privacy-centric GA4 leverages data-driven attribution to view a unified customer journey, analyze the full impact of your investment, and generate predictive & holistic insights into user behavior. CMSWire thinks GA4 represents an opportunity to improve the way you act on your analytics.
In addition, with Universal Analytics sunsetting in July 2023, GA4 could be your perfect 360o website tracking and analytics ally. However, other analytics solutions can potentially do the same and more. Let’s dive in to see if they can deliver!
Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is the latest version of Google’s analytics platform that provides granular insights about visitor activity on the website and application. GA4 uses AI and Machine learning (ML) to deliver advanced reporting capabilities, besides several new functionalities and enhancements to enable tracking across the length of a user’s journey.
GA4 provides a more flexible, comprehensive, and advanced set of functionalities to monitor and analyze your website’s performance – making it an indispensable data-driven tool for businesses that rely on digital identity. As per Google, GA4’s stronger analytics experience makes it the future of web analytics.
GA4 focuses on events and user interactions rather than counting page views.
It tracks and reports on specific actions (events), like playing a video or filling out a form for a more in-depth understanding of visitor engagement, enabling educated data-backed decisions to optimize the user experience.
Furthermore, GA4 is more privacy-centric – allowing better data collection, retention, and deletion. The AI-enabled reporting interface is more streamlined and supports different stages of the user journey alongside Machine Learning (ML) & Behavioral Modeling that address data sparsity issues and provide more sophisticated forecasting abilities for contextualized insights.
Furthermore, “Conversion Events” will replace Goals, and the Bounce Rate definition has changed to be more time specific.
With a more modernized dashboard, GA4 has a new look and feel. Furthermore, it has changed how it analyzes user sessions through event-based tracking – tracking across multiple touchpoints and using AI and ML to predict user behavior and churn probability.
The reports are more customizable, the insights more real-time, privacy is pivotal, and audience building & custom funnels have become more analytical to give digital marketers more control & agility and enable informed decisions for a higher return on marketing spend.
eCommerce tracking improved through custom parameters, allowing more data collection about products. Search is more intuitive, create custom channel groups, and the number of Properties and Sub-Properties has increased.
Contact us to get a free SEO/PPC audit and discuss how you can outrank your competition within the first 3 months.
GA4 provides a wealth of data, in-depth reporting standards, better cross-device tracking through “data streams,” operates on ML algorithms, and streamlines the user behavior analysis for empowered and accelerated data-driven decisions.
Additionally, Universal Analytics will retire in July, making it imperative to shift now. Start accumulating the data, examine functions, unearth capabilities, define objectives, and monitor critical metrics. Maintain continuity with existing data and avoid disruptions by accurately comparing and mapping GA4 events to historical UA data.
Migrate before the deadline and avoid losing the ability for detailed comparisons to prior periods.
A privacy-friendly web analytics tool that lets you react to visitor activity in real-time, mask IP addresses, perform split tests on pages, configure goals, track retention, block bots, receive downtime alerts, get video analytics, and monitor social media activity, none of which exist on GA4. Additionally, track visitors with disabled JavaScript, and create dynamic goals.
Source: Clicky.com
Matomo enables clear user pathways, visibility into channels giving higher ROI, comprehensive insights across the conversion funnel, and A/B testing on webpages. Use media analytics to collect data on video & audio content. Use social media analytics to monitor social engagement. Extract customized reports, embed 3rd Party tracking codes, and gauge the performance of ad campaigns better.
Source: Motamo.org
Get quick and complete insights into your customer journey on an intuitive no-code dashboard to improve your digital experience across all channels. Create segments, view visual maps of user flows, replay user sessions, capture accurate data through event tracking, ensure security and privacy, get contextualized data, and integrate with other tools.
Source: Heap
The advanced, democratized, and automated analytics of Woopra tracks everything everywhere. Unify data across multiple touchpoints & tools, analyze journeys, trends, segments, & more, and act in real-time with built-in personalized triggers. Uncover insights through Full-funnel, obstacle, churn, product, subscription analysis, and more.
Source: Woopra
The one-stop-shop Gauges, tracks, and updates visitor activity in real-time across multiple touchpoints. Build custom attribution models, manage campaigns, and prepare collaborative reports to expedite decision-making. Examine content, product, pages, segment, regions, etc., to prepare an impactful online identity through multi-dimensional learning.
Source: Gauges
The multi-channel attribution tools, custom reporting features, simple & stylistic dashboard, unlimited properties & views, 30-minute data freshness, and metasite & real-time analysis help to provide holistic access and drill-down on user data. Tag manager, automatic triggers, A/B tests, content personalization, and other features streamline your analytics exercise.
Source: Piwik
With so many overlapping stand-out features, it’s hard to pick one solution that nails the analytics game. They all deliver on many aspects, but Piwik Analytics Suite edges out. Piwik is a value-for-money all-in-one suite jam-packed with features to support every activity of your digital analytics roadmap.
Piwik is a fit-for-purpose tool that provides compliance, ease of implementation & use, technical support, multi-channel integration, and a widespread community. Furthermore, you get detailed documentation, data visualizations, Google Ads integration, session-level tracking, customer journey analysis, and more.
Conclusion
Future-proof your website analytics reporting with GA4 or any of the alternatives. Ultimately, the best solution depends on your preferences. So, take the time to extensively evaluate your options. If you require help configuring advanced analytics, need help measuring webpage performance through tagging, or need help picking the right analytics solution, reach out to our experts.
Google’s Search Generative Experience (SGE) is revolutionizing the way we search online. By leveraging AI, SGE provides more comprehensive and informative search results. To stay...
The world of content creation is experiencing a dramatic transformation. The rise of AI content writing services is changing the way businesses approach content creation,...
Recent advancements in AI have significantly impacted the field of content creation. According to a global market report from The Business Research Company, AI in...
The life science industry is expanding rapidly, but businesses in this sector face unique challenges when it comes to digital marketing. A report from MarketsandMarkets...
In an era where industries are rapidly transforming, the oil and gas sector is no exception. As the market landscape shifts, embracing digital marketing is...
Keywords play a vital role in SEO, especially for Shopify stores aiming to attract organic traffic and improve online visibility. They’re more than just search...
