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"Google Analytics is shut down". Have you also seen that headline and felt a major uphill struggle? It's not as bad as it sounds. In fact, it's really good.
So what's about to happen is that Google Universal Analytics, the classic GA version that just about everyone uses, will cease to function on July 1, 2023. The upside is that something better awaits: Google Analytics 4 (GA4). We'll go over its benefits a bit further down, but first a callback to the title of this blog post. Why make the switch now? After all, there's a little over a year to go.
Well, depending on the extent to which you use all of Analytics' features, it may take some time to implement the new system - not to mention the new ways of working and procedures that come with it. GA4 is a much sharper tool if you do everything right, but it also gives the user a lot of freedom, which in turn can make for a long start-up period.
Everything new takes time, as we all know. GA4 is certainly far from new, but everyone has stuck with the old for the sake of convenience. It's easy to get like that.
Run both systems in parallel
Six months after the closure of the GUA, the data you have accumulated also disappears. You can download it, of course, but it won't be transferred to the new tool. This is probably the most important reason to get going now.
You can run both systems in parallel. In other words, you and your team can continue to work with the "old" routines for a while longer, slowly but surely getting used to GA4 and building up new (sustainable) data so that you are not left empty-handed when the shift takes place.
How to think with your old data and how to plan your future data collection, we can of course help with that - just like implementing GA4.
More useful data awaits
You could say Google is forcing us to make this switch, but we think they're doing users a favour. After all, the benefits of GA4 are many.
For starters, it's completely platform independent. That may seem like a given these days, but it bears underlining. It also has a stronger GDPR safeguard, which of course gives you added peace of mind.
But most interesting of all, GA4 gives you a much more detailed picture of your customer's life and buying cycle. For example, you can see more than the last source, i.e. the last click. This makes it possible, for example, to understand the results of a more sophisticated marketing effort. Very good!
In short, with the right implementation and practices, you will get more valuable data in the future. You will also be able to automatically draw (or get) conclusions about things like target audiences and user behaviour with the help of machine learning. Moreover, if you integrate the tool with Google Ads, for example - then you've found the key to truly optimized ad campaigns.
That said, there's really no need to wait.
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