How to smoothly migrate to Google Analytics 4?

Introduction

In April Google has officially announced to shut down Universal Analytics by July 2023. Just between 2020 to 2023 the transition, unfortunately, doesn’t make it a smooth data migration switch for switching to GA4. Consequently, this took a long time for marketing as successful and smooth transition isn’t quite. Deep are the needs to find a desirable strategies for all sorts of websites, whether you have the classic client-side GTM setup or a already fully adapted with GTM server-side tracking.

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How To Smoothly Migrate to Google Analytics 4?

It is most important to start the GA4 data collection process as soon as possible, preferably before July 2022, to ensure that there is data that is available for repor­ting when Universal Analytics is no longer available. If you are one of those agencies and brands that are not familiar with the discrepancy between GA4 and Universal, the best thing to do is to get prepared with a parallel setup of both systems and audit your website data. Google Analytics is not a straight update of Universal Analytics but rather the house of GA4. This version does not run the same data model. You might have to be BFCM or you do DWI. So it is even more crucial to understand and run a solid setup for a smooth switch and reporting process.

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Depending on your resources there are two viable options for such a parallel infrastructure. Both are described below.

Short Term Implementation

No matter whether you have tags setup directly implemented or you are using GTM client or server-side tagging, you can move comfortably started as soon as possible by adding your basic GA4 event and page view tags and transactions. This way you’re capturing every page view and transaction in both, your existing Universal Analytics and your new GA4 setup. If there is however lower traffic a day, then for the client-side implementation it will send out two hits per event, one to Universal Analytics and one to GA4.

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Having the GA4 configuration tag and the purchase tag implemented ensures that you have the following metrics in GA4 and run a meaningful parallel analysis and comparison between both GA4 and UA:

• Users
• Sessions
• Pageviews
• Transactions
• Channel Reports (Acquisition Channels and Conversion Channels Reports)

The mentioned metrics will allow you to see a comparison between UA and GA4 of your current setup.

Make sure to place the universal user properties in the configuration tag, i.e. userID or userEmail. Passing user and userID data with GA4 helps enrich your cross users preferences!

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Long Term Solution

If you have not switched to GTM server-side tagging yet, you will have to make the switch quickly. Compared to client-side tagging this is heavily on the resources and the migration process. But with server-side tagging you will benefit with:

• Higher data accuracy
• Faster loading time for users
• Lower risk for blocking data collection
• Higher data privacy
• Reporting stability

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Staying with the Client-Side Implementation

Proceeding with the client-side implementation and expanding your short term solution setup definitely is viable option and a fully straightforward implementation. In this scenario, you can create GA4 events while gradually losing the client events for Analytics events.

Once set up correctly, there is no need to rush in the short term and can have a temporary encouragement with server-side events. Depending on your needs, third-party add-ons partially implemented or you might not be keen on directly moving to Universal Analytics events to keep the user’s client from slowing down.

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Advanced Server-Side Implementation

In case you already have GTM server-side tagging in place or are interested in switching to it, we highly recommend investing in implementing the parallel tracking infrastructure for GA4. The benefit is an even smoother simultaneous switching as well as much lower risk if you haven’t had these short-term or client-side switch as described above.

With server-side tagging you can offload data flow from your web container to your server container while final key user properties are not moved to the client-side but processed in the server-side, helping your brand funnel reducing in high data requests.

In the previous tag manager setup you will be able to take the benefits of server-side tagging, while populating the GA4 property.

»Clients who have implemented server-side tagging see an approximately 11% increase in tracked traffic.«

To implement the advanced server-side solution you will need to use a GTM server container. However when migrating your Universal Analytics keys to the server-side container or to Google Analytics property GA4 a SaaS setup.

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Additional Things to Consider

Congratulations, you have successfully secured your reporting basis by building up a GA4 infrastructure. With likely, there are two more things to consider:

1. GA4 Property User-ID implementation: With GA4 comes also a new recommended industry structure that should ideally be implemented on your website. Ideally, this is the best practice solution for an implementation basis. It is possible to translate the Universal Analytics DataLayer to a GA4 DataLayer by using a custom tool in the GTM server-side. If you have the user-ID structure set up it is recommended to gradually match the new GA4 structure as it will improve your site performance.
2. Reporting the internal events of Google Analytics: For many businesses reports showed discrepancies in Google Analytics. Therefore, plan enough time to switch your Data Warehouse processes or other reporting tools to the new data structure from GA4.

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