Google Analytics 4, also known as GA4, is the latest iteration of the popular web analytics platform offered by Google. It has been designed to provide users with an enhanced user experience, more accurate data collection, and advanced analytics capabilities. In this blog, we will highlight 11 amazing features of Google Analytics 4 that you should check out.

1. Cross-Device Tracking

Cross-device tracking is an advanced feature in Google Analytics 4 that helps you track users across different devices and web browsers. This allows you to understand how customers interact with your website and the products they purchase.

In previous versions of Google Analytics, you could recognize a user only if they were logged in to your site. But when they visited your site on a different device, you couldn’t link the two sessions to the same user.

To solve this problem, they introduced a new Google Analytics 4 property called “Google Signals” to identify a user. This allows you to stitch together data collected from two different devices (even if they’re not logged in) to give you a more accurate picture of your customer journey.

This is especially useful for businesses that cater to multiple devices and screen sizes. It also gives you a more holistic view of your customer’s experience. In addition, it will help you improve your cross-device marketing efforts.

2. Predictive Analytics

Predictive analytics is a powerful tool that allows you to forecast future outcomes. It combines data with statistical and machine learning techniques to make predictions based on past information.

For example, retailers use predictive analytics to determine inventory requirements, create pricing strategies, configure store layouts, and predict the number of customers. It also helps them optimize marketing campaigns and generate new customer responses or purchases.

In addition to this, predictive analytics can help businesses slash expenses by providing fraud detection capabilities. You can also use it to identify risks in healthcare or information security.

Getting started with predictive analytics requires a well-defined problem to solve and a robust foundation in data preparation and reporting. It is best to start with a small pilot project in a key business area before you go all in.

3. Improved User-ID Tracking

The User ID feature works by collecting unique IDs from every user who is using your website. You can use these IDs to identify them across sessions and devices.

This is an amazing way to track visitors and understand their buying journey better. For instance, let’s say that a person is browsing your store on their smartphone and finds the product they want to buy.

They then visit your website a few days later, this time on their tablet or laptop, and purchase it. Without User ID tracking, you would not be able to know that this was the same person and that they were shopping for the same product.

Google Analytics 4 offers an improved user-ID tracking option, which gives you the ability to see a more holistic view of how your users interact with your website. It also helps you unlock data that was previously unavailable to you, such as cross-device tracking and behavioral reports.

4. Enhanced E-commerce Tracking

The Enhanced E-commerce Google Analytics new features are a powerful way to track eCommerce data and generate more revenue from your online store. It allows you to track product impressions, clicks, and purchases at any stage in the purchase funnel.

However, implementing this functionality requires more customization than traditional analytics tracking. In order to get the most out of it, it is important to have a close collaboration between the development and marketing teams.

It’s recommended that you clearly communicate what is expected of both parties before diving into coding. This will ensure that your ecommerce tracking setup is properly configured and is aligned with your marketing goals.

In the past, Google Analytics only allowed you to track product impressions and clicks using pageviews. But now, it also enables you to collect product impressions, promotion, and sales data using events.

5. Real-Time Reporting

One of the new features in Google Analytics 4 is Real-Time Reporting. It allows you to monitor website activity from moment to moment and provides valuable insights into the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns, web infrastructure, and more.

Real-Time Reporting also helps you track and analyze your users’ behavior on the go. It can help you determine how your customers react to a specific campaign on Twitter or an email newsletter.

The real-time report in GA4 also includes a map where you can hover over blue circles that represent your users’ location. You can also see cards that ask questions such as where are your most active users coming from and what campaigns are working the best.

However, real-time data is incredibly limited, so it’s important to keep that in mind when using it. That said, it’s a great way to test out a new SEO Company in Boise or measure the impact of your latest marketing initiative.

6. Custom Dimensions and Metrics

Google Analytics 4 has introduced custom dimensions and metrics for logged event parameters. These can be used to get additional insights into user behavior and how they engage with your website and mobile apps.

These can be used to see how users interact with your app and website before making a purchase. This can help you target your marketing efforts more effectively and increase conversions.

Custom dimensions are a big step up from Universal Analytics (UA), where you could set them to describe hit-scoped or session-scoped data. But in GA4, you can also set them to be either user-scoped or event-scoped.

Using this functionality, you can create a new data card that appears in every event report where you are sending a specific logged event parameter. This makes your reports much more detailed and catered to your needs as a business.

7. Improved Event Tracking

Google Analytics 4 (formerly called Universal Analytics) offers a new range of events for tracking different actions. These events allow marketers to understand how users interact with their websites from a more holistic perspective.

Unlike the previous version, Google Analytics 4 also provides better insight into the buyer’s journey. This means that marketers can get a better understanding of how people engaged with their website or app and what led them to make a purchase.

The upgraded event tracking is one of the most exciting features of Google Analytics 4. It’s based on machine learning, which makes it possible to create new types of reports that surface helpful insights.

While these new reports have been a big help to marketing teams, there were still some things that required more data than they could get from the default reporting options in Universal Analytics.

Google Analytics new features include enhanced measurement that automatically collects a range of content interaction events to get around these limitations. These events are logged without the need to modify your website’s code or contact a developer.

8. Improved Conversion Funnel Analysis

Conversion funnel analysis is an important tool in marketing and ecommerce, as it gives you detailed data about your users’ interactions. It can help you identify conversion issues and determine how to solve them.

Funnel analysis also helps you segment your users into cohorts, which will allow you to target them with campaigns that are relevant to their stage in the customer journey. You can also use it to track user behavior on your website, which can help you enhance your user experience and reduce cart abandonment.

You can use Google Analytics to define your goals and the steps that lead to them. Once you’ve done this, you can use a funnel visualization to analyze the path your visitors take to achieve those goals.

You can also use a funnel visualization report to track the last three steps visitors took to complete a goal. These reports provide a detailed visual representation of the user’s journey to conversions. You can even customize them to your specific business and browser type. This will ensure that you get the reports that you need to start optimizing your conversions.

9. Conversion Tracking

Conversion tracking enables you to measure valuable customer actions, such as subscribing to a newsletter or buying a product. It helps you assess the success of your marketing and advertising campaigns, maximize your ROI and inform your budget.

This Google Analytics 4 property allows you to easily track conversions across websites, apps, and other online sources. It also provides detailed information about what people are searching for when they find your site.

You need to create goals in Google Analytics to start tracking your conversions. Depending on the type of action, you can either set up goals that occur in a single session or that occur over a period of time.

10. Custom Reports

Custom Reports are one of the most useful features of Google Analytics 4. They allow you to customize standard reports and build out a more personalized view of your data.

They also let you save time by cutting out the data that doesn’t directly support your business goals.

To create a Custom Report, select the dimensions and metrics you want to see. You can also use filters to help you narrow down your results even further.

For example, you can create a Custom Report that shows e-commerce-related metrics without wasting time sifting through all of your standard metric and conversion data. In less than 30 seconds, you can have a Custom Report with the exact data you need to make informed business decisions.

11. Data Anomalies Alerts

Data Anomalies Alerts are a great way to stay on top of any unexpected changes in your analytics. For example, a traffic drop that happens to your most popular page or your e-commerce store could be an anomaly and an opportunity for you to get your hands on some valuable insights.

In Google Analytics, you can set up smart alerts that look for unexpected changes outside of a 99% confidence interval. This means that a 50 percent drop in visits from Google might be an anomaly, and you can quickly triage the alert and see whether it needs to be addressed or ignored.

To get started with the alerts, set a lookback interval and the number of the latest buckets. Then, Intelligence will check your data for any anomalies that may have been missed during the last Lookback interval.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Google Analytics 4 provides a wealth of amazing functionalities that can help you gain a deeper understanding of your website or app’s performance and make data-driven decisions. Whether you’re looking to track user behavior across multiple devices, make predictions about user behavior, or optimize your website or app for specific groups of users, the new features in Google Analytics 4 has the tools and capabilities to help you achieve your goals. So, take the time to explore these functionalities and see what they can do for your business.