Google Analytics is a crucial tool that helps you measure and analyze the results of your website and your online marketing. This way you learn how to improve your website and where your conversions come from. In Analytics you will find out, among other things:

The biggest change is in the core, namely how Analytics measures the website. Unlike Universal Analytics (UA), Google Analytics 4 (GA4) works with an event-driven data model, which has many consequences for the way your website is measured.

Previously, Google measured everything via sessions, linked to user data. User data is data about the user that Analytics collects from cookies or from your browser settings, such as age, gender or location. Sessions are the aggregated events in a visit, such as page views, downloads, or purchases. Google collects all this data and processes it into neat graphs and tables.

For many websites, this method of measurement still works well. However, with the rise of mobile apps and single page sites, tracking sessions and pageviews are no longer the best way to measure visitor experience.

Key metrics like bounce rate, time on page, and pages per session are all based on this data. Apps, games and video players, however, often do not load separate pages. So you immediately miss a lot of valuable data here. More and more websites are also built on a single page with tabs or other solutions. Previously, the most user-friendly solutions did not always give the best ratings. That problem is now addressed with GA4.

The new way of measuring separates sessions and page views. Instead, it measures a series of events, with each event passing additional information to Google Analytics via certain parameters.

This solves a major bugbear for many marketers: the number of 'eyes' no longer leads. The emphasis is now towards relevant and monetizable visits and interactions.

Is Google Analytics 4 only useful for companies that want to bring together data from their website and app, or have a single page site? Not necessarily. Below we take a closer look at the six most important changes that Google Analytics 4 brings.

Google promises more in-depth insights and predictions with Google Analytics 4. Based on artificial intelligence, the tool will, for example, be able to warn you when the demand for certain products increases, help you discover new target groups and predict how much profit you could make with these new target groups.

Universal Analytics uses the bounce rate as a measure of the quality of your pages. But in Google Analytics 4, it is replaced by engagement. An engaged user is someone who:

Thanks to that form of engagement, Google Analytics no longer sees users who only view one page of your website as something negative, as long as they stay on that page long enough. Has your page helped your visitor, meaning they do not need to view other pages? Google Analytics 4 recognizes that as a positive.

Customers and leads arrive at your website via various devices and browsers. Google Analytics 4 cleverly responds to this by bundling data from the same person on different devices into 1 user journey.

You can give the tool a helping hand by making data available from users who have logged into your website or created an account. But that's not always necessary: Google also takes into account device IDs and Google accounts to track the user journey. And if that data is not complete, you can use Analytics to create a User ID for each user. So there are plenty of ways to track an (anonymous) user across multiple devices and platforms.

Like Universal Analytics, you can also request reports in Google Analytics 4 that give you more insight into your data. In Universal Analytics you have a laundry list of reports to choose from, but Google Analytics 4 takes a different approach.

In the new version you get a number of overview reports (e.g. engagement, retention, demographics, technology, etc.) you can adjust, using the 'Edit report' command. Do you want to create a more detailed report? Use the new tool 'Analysis'.

In the Discover hub you can connect all insights and metrics, determine audiences, filter data and much more. You can then export or download those analyses to show your colleagues or partners.

There are different types of analysis. You can find all of these if you click into the Discover tab. You can divide the seven main analyses into four categories.

Google Analytics 4 also has a handy search bar that makes it easy to find your way around the new environment. That search bar is nothing new in itself, but it has been greatly improved compared to previous versions. From now on you can not only find the right tools, but the search bar also anticipates questions.

For example, Google Analytics 4 suggests, “What are my top events based on users?” when you type “What” into the search bar. If you click on the question, you will see a report. Other (basic) questions are also possible and always lead you to a small report. Handy for quickly looking up data in a clear way.

Does Google Analytics 4 have any disadvantages? Unfortunately, yes. Google Analytics 4 seems a lot more minimalistic at first glance. A lot has been automated, so that a new account immediately collects more data (mainly events). Still, there seem to be a few features missing. Below we take a closer look at the four main flaws that Google Analytics 4 still has.

At present, it seems more difficult to set extra goals yourself. Think of the goals from Universal Analytics where you could set a visit to a thank you page as a goal (for example after completing a contact form) or for users who have seen more than a set number of pages. If you want to measure these, you will need Google Tag Manager, a tool that demands a higher technical threshold to use.

It is not yet possible to create views in Google Analytics 4. Views have always been very useful for editing the data, such as making sure there was a view that filtered IP addresses or a view that aggregated 404 views to quickly discover error pages. This is a feature that should return, according to Google.

In Google Analytics 4 it is also not possible to create filters yourself. It is now only possible to specify IP addresses that mark this traffic as internal traffic. If you make a mistake, you cannot create a backup view to contain all raw data. Also, the IP addresses cannot be added in bulk, because it is not (yet) possible to add IP addresses in regular expression (regex).

In addition to missing views, filters and a number of reports, there are also a number of statistics that are missing, or have been given a different interpretation. Bounce rate, pages per session and exit rate have been removed from the reports. These were statistics that were focused on assessing your visitor's behaviour (for instance by looking at which sources generated the most qualitative user data).

To create and set up Google Analytics 4, we advise you to make some adjustments within Google Analytics 4. If you don't have Google Analytics 4 yet, but would like to create it, find the instructions here.

If you have already created Google Analytics 4 and you want to set up cross domain tracking, for example, we have explained all the steps for you here.

To place Google Analytics 4 in Google Tag Manager, a ready-made container has been set up for you. You only need to complete this with your measurement ID. A how-to can be found here.

By default, Google Analytics 4 measures the following things on your website or app:

Of course, Google Analytics 4 measures most of the statistics that you already know from Google Analytics.

If you use the ready-made Stager container, you can also measure ticket sales, the amount of tickets sold and the resulting turnover. Do you use an integrated ticket shop on your website? Then it is also important to set up cross-domain tracking.