The totally free version of Google Analytics, Universal Analytics, is the most extensively utilised net analytics answer. The system is so popular that it dominates 86% market place share, creating Google the market leader. But even although several take into consideration Google Analytics the standard, there are factors to inquire if it is the excellent selection for your marketing setup—especially because Google declared the sunset of Common Analytics.
On July 1, 2023, Universal Analytics houses will halt processing new hits, forcing end users to swap to its successor, Google Analytics 4. While this could seem to be like a purely natural progression, entrepreneurs should not be fooled.
The learning curve will be steep—Google Analytics 4 is almost an totally new platform and even now creating. On major of that, Google Analytics challenges dropping the users’ have faith in owing to grey places all-around the likes of privateness and knowledge ownership.
With a privacy-concentrated long run in advance, now is the time to seek out solutions that better stability information selection with compliance. With a good analytics system, marketers make your knowledge collection as it must be: predictable and sustainable. Right after all, marketers and analysts want to approach consumer-degree knowledge when building have faith in with their people.
In this posting, we will dive into the problems with Google Analytics 4 from a consumer viewpoint and from a privateness and compliance standpoint, so you can make an educated final decision just before switching platforms.
Person viewpoint: Google Analytics 4 is a move in the mistaken direction
Google Analytics 4 introduces an altered reporting and measurement technological innovation that is neither perfectly recognized nor greatly acknowledged by the promoting local community.
From a user experience point of view, a lot of come across GA4 hard to navigate. But outside of that, there are a host of problems with the attribute sets. Permit us dig further into all those restrictions:
There is no uncomplicated way to migrate your details
Migration is a intricate course of action and ought to be planned very carefully. Sad to say, Google Analytics 4 does not make it any much easier. Without data or tag migration, all historic data from Universal Analytics will not be transferred to the new platform.
The problem only grows with the organization’s size—you can have hundreds of tags to move. So, if entrepreneurs will have to begin amassing details from scratch, they may possibly as effectively change to a new analytic application.
Not-so-intuitive person interface
The most notable obstacle entrepreneurs and analysts will possible encounter with Google Analytics 4 is the unfamiliarity with the new interface.
A new dashboard has a number of instantly obvious distinctions from what entrepreneurs are utilised to running. Strike kinds are crucial to how Common Analytic properties deal with all stats. Strike types include website page hits, event hits, eCommerce hits, and social conversation hits.
GA4 does not have any principle of a strike sort like Common Analytics employs. Everything in Google Analytics 4 is categorized as an “event.” This is a big distinction.
In buy for marketers to have accomplishment on the new system, they will have to adapt speedily to preserve the exact momentum they had with this preceding system.
Restrictions on personalized dimensions
A custom made dimension is an attribute that entrepreneurs can configure in their analytics instrument to dive further into their facts. It provides the possibility to pivot or phase this information to isolate a certain viewers or website traffic for further assessment.
GA4 indeed makes it possible for for tailor made proportions to section reports, but there is a demanding limit. You can only have up to 25 consumer-scoped tailor made dimensions and up to 50 function-scoped personalized proportions for each residence.
Lack of personalized channel grouping
Channel groupings are rule-based mostly groupings of internet marketing channels. When personalized, these groupings allow for marketers to keep track of the overall performance of people channels proficiently.
Compared with Universal Analytics, GA4 does not let you to produce custom channel groupings in the new interface. Instead, marketers will only be capable to use their default channel groupings.
Motivations at the rear of the limited deadline
The deadline Google has left the analytics community to act is startling. There are several speculations as to why this could possibly be, which include:
- Google may well have been dissatisfied with the velocity of adoption for Google Analytics 4 and made the decision to act decisively.
- Google circumventing some of the authorized heat that Common Analytics is experiencing in the EU.
- Google seeking to slice costs and rid by itself of technical credit card debt involved with countless numbers of internet websites with legacy answers installed. Due to the fact GA4 is developed to support Google’s promotion community, it ensures much more revenue than the opposition.
Now there is a concrete deadline to make the switch, marketers will want to come to a decision whether or not they want to start out changing to Google Analytics 4 or get started afresh with a new platform.
Privacy and compliance: Google Analytics 4 has a long way to go
If a corporation operates in a number of countries, promoting teams will want to be informed of the various issues ensuing from the obligations of each nearby details privacy laws and international restrictions.
Facts safety laws constantly transforming and restricted stability restrictions only complicate issues further. Studying the tea leaves, we feel GA4 will not last long in Europe. Here’s why:
Google Analytics violates European law
Google makes it challenging to acquire info in line with the Basic Information Security Regulation (GDPR), which aims to restore management of personalized info to buyers and consumers. The regulation involves you to get specific consent when processing particular facts. Failure to comply with this provision can consequence in hefty fines or even prosecution.
The current final decision of the Austrian Facts Security Authority (DSB), states that the use of Google Analytics constitutes a violation of GDPR. This indicates that companies engaged in accumulating, storing, and processing data about EU citizens have to adjust their policies and introduce serious technological variations to be GDPR-compliant.
There is no apparent guideline exactly where the information is related through Google Analytics
A Google guideline implies data is transferred to the closest Google Analytics server hub. On the other hand, the information could be saved in a geographic locale that does not have sufficient privateness protection to the EU.
Newly released attributes in GA4 partly address this concern by permitting the initial portion of knowledge collection (and anonymization) on European servers. However, details can, and most possible will, be despatched to the U.S.
The long run of promoting demands users’ consent
Whether it be the data top quality, device constraints, deficiency of privacy-friendly features, or transparency in managing details, we think marketers will probably consider switching platforms.
Piwik Professional excluds the privateness and compliance concerns affiliated with Google Analytics, letting entrepreneurs to acquire data predictably and sustainably. The user interface and feature sets are very similar to Universal Analytics, so marketers and analysts really feel at house when switching to our platform.
If you would like to discover much more about Google Analytics choices or get a lot more info on the Piwik Pro Analytics Suite, visit piwik.pro.
Continue to undecided? Check out out our short article on addressing the problems about switching to an alternate analytics solution and the analytic way of thinking you should really be using: Switching from Google Analytics—here’s what you will need to know.
