Top 5 Things You Need to Know about GA4

On July 1st, 2023, Google will sunset Universal Analytics and replace it with Google Analytics 4 (GA4). This new platform is designed from the ground up to be fully compliant with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and is built for the future, allowing organizations to seamlessly integrate desktop, mobile, and app traffic in one centralized environment. There are numerous reasons to be excited about this shift in data collection, but digital organizations around the globe are faced with the challenge of migrating their analytics in an efficient and accurate manner. As a digital optimization consultancy, analytics is central to our mission of making the internet a better place through data-backed recommendations. Whether you’re an analytics pro or just getting started, here are our top five tips on preparing for GA4:

1. Event-based data collection, rather than session-based 

GA4 takes an entirely new approach to data collection than previous versions. Whereas in Universal Analytics (UA), events were captured and reported on within a duration of time called a “session”, GA4 processes each individual interaction as a standalone event. This allows for the seamless tracking of a user as they browse on their phone, research on their tablet, and convert on their home computer (for example).

2. New UI, new reporting 

GA4 isn’t just a new name and data structure, it also features a new and simplified user interface. You don’t need to be a professional analyst to get actionable insights right out of the box. Simply browse the pre-built reports and dive in! If you’re a seasoned vet looking for a familiar experience, you may find some of your tried-and-true reports look or behave differently, but with GA4’s Explorations you can slice and dice your data for more powerful custom reports, leveraging a gallery of robust templates or free-form analysis.

3. Events are simpler than ever

Implementing and analyzing events to understand your digital experience is easier than ever with GA4. Under Universal Analytics, events include a three-tiered structure, which relies heavily on Google Tag Manager (GTM). However, GA4 tracks unique interactions under a single event name, with necessary additional details being captured as event parameters. For example, “click_video” may be the event, with an event parameter of “Top 5 Things to Know About GA4”, which is the title of the video. You can even create events and conversions based off of either event or event parameter, allowing a page view for your confirmation page to fire a unique event to track conversion performance.

4. GA4 puts privacy first

GA4 is fully GDPR compliant and uses first-party cookies, but is also designed to leverage machine learning to work in a cookie-less future. The inclusion of machine learning-powered artificial intelligence offers deep insights and quality of life improvements to your reporting—like understanding when a user is sent off-site to complete a transaction but sent back to your site for confirmation.

5. GA4 is not retroactive 

While the mandatory switch to GA4 goes into effect on July 1st, 2023, it’s important to understand that analytics data is not retroactive. The sooner GA4 is up and running on your property, the better its machine-learning capabilities will be able to serve your business goals. Running GA4 and Universal Analytics—or GA360—will not result in any breakages, so there is no harm in running them in parallel. It’s likely GA4 will continue to see updates before July 1st with more features being released or improved. There’s no better time than now to jump in and start learning!

In Closing

With just five months until the switch to GA4, do you have your migration plan ready to go? From auditing your set-up to configuring events, we’re here to help create a custom solution for you. Don’t wait until July, connect with our team today to get started! 

The Mission for Fully-Perfect Customer Connections

Each step forward, no matter how winding the path, is a step closer to digital transformation.

Over a decade ago, Roboboogie humbly began as a specialized design boutique focused on solving complex UX challenges for our clients. As time went on, we rounded out our services to cover the full web experience with expertise across digital marketing, creative, and web development. Like our peer agencies, we had to rely heavily on institutional knowledge, best practice, industry insights, and a healthy dose of intuition.

In 2015, we layered on A/B testing thanks to a fresh partnership with our friends at Optimizely, which unlocked a new ability to run experiments in rapid fire. Shout out to our first A/B testing client, The Clymb! A/B testing opened a new and powerful way to help our clients through iterative site improvements. We could now validate our UX strategy and make swift improvements to bring about big, measurable change.

Experimentation made customizable data collection simple, creating the opportunity to let data drive design decisions. The data quality, paired with our ability to translate numbers into insights, provided a deeper path into client partnership. As we have gained experience in the field, the suite of analytics technologies we utilize has grown. We’ve harnessed an array of qualitative and quantitative analytics tools to drive new insights including Adobe Target, A/B Tasty, Google Optimize, Convert, UserTesting.com, FullStory, Crazy Egg, Hot Jar, GlassBox,  among many others. We even developed a healthy obsession with Google Analytics that led us to building a custom A/B testing algorithm within GTM.

However, our service offerings between data, design, and technology remained siloed and clients often connected with us for a single solution. We knew the value of integrating this work, which led to our transition from an agency to a consultancy. As our position within partner organizations continues to elevate, our role has increasingly been about charting the best path forward with our clients. Our teams have become intimately entwined, building off of each other’s work on the mission of digital transformation.

Unified in mission.

Optimization is no longer something we do at Roboboogie, it is how we live and breathe. It is not a product offering or deliverable. It does not live with one role, individual or department.

Everyone on our team is an optimization consultant, and every individual shares that same top-level goal. Our team is routinely asking themselves, “Does the work I’m doing help move my client toward ‘perfected brand-customer connection’? What is the most valuable thing I can do right now to advance that mission? “ 

The secret sauce of optimization is in process. It is the methodology in which you identify needs, prioritize opportunities, develop solutions, and execute plans. It’s in the deliberate weighing decisions against the mission: a lifetime customer bond. It’s a recipe we’ve been developing for over a decade.

Our optimization recipe.

  • Partner with innovative clients who are passionate about holistically driving transformation of their digital experience.
  • Develop audience personas and map customer journeys – informed by data –to understand the deep needs and desires of customers. 
  • Harness wide data sets and powerful technology to unearth gaps in the current digital experience that can be filled with design solutions. 
  • Integrate teams of experts across data, design, and technology.
  • Customize the optimization strategy for each client.
  • Let data guide the journey, but never let numbers stifle the creative process.
  • Stay nimble and responsive. Each step forward, no matter how winding the path, is a step closer to digital experience transformation.

True, authentic digital transformation takes time. It takes a continued commitment to reorient to ever-changing customers and the all-out pursuit of taking each experience one step closer to perfection. Each step provides reward with more customers, happy customers, and improved performance.

Looking ahead.

Internally, we use the playful mantra “Happy Customers Convert.” Since our beginning, we have always held the customer at the heart of everything we do because taking care of people gets the best results. Over the years as we have layered on measurement tools, we have been able to prove that to be true. When customers’ needs are met, business performance follows. It turns out, happy customers do convert.

As we officially transition Roboboogie’s focus from Website Performance Optimization to Digital Experience Transformation, we are eager for the next chapter ahead. You’ll still be able to expect that same great work and services we offer, but with a higher unified vision. There’s so much untapped potential across the digital landscape for organizations to connect their data, design, and technology efforts to create fully-perfect customer connections online. Investing in Customer Lifetime Value pays. We have witnessed it first-hand (with big business impacts) for some of our long-time client partnerships – NordicTrack, Adobe, and Wacom to name a few. 

If you are interested in partnering together to create digital environments that form undeniable connections and life-long bonds between your brand and customers, hit me up (Jed@teamroboboogie.com). I’d love to share more about how we can help you better meet your customer needs in the digital space. I can confidently say you’ll be thrilled with the business outcomes. 

Until then, just remember: Happy Customers Convert.

Jedidiah Fugle, Roboboogie Chief Operating Officer

Spark 2022 Interview

Last month, our team had the opportunity to attend the first ever Digital Experience Intelligence (DXI) conference hosted by our partner, FullStory. The event brought together digital experience leaders and trailblazers to connect and share their passion for all things DXI. 

After three action packed days, we came home filled with ideas and tons of excitement for the new platform features that will make it even easier for our customers to drive strategic growth. At Roboboogie, we help our customers leverage the full power of FullStory through training and enablement, implementation support and more.

Hear all about our team’s experience at the conference and what got them jazzed about the future of DXI.

Dreamers by Mixaund | https://mixaund.bandcamp.com
Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com