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Give Me One Good Reason Why I Should Be Dual Tagging? I’ll Give You Two.

Closeup portrait nervous, stressed woman

(On July 1, 2023, Universal Analytics, the platform we have all relied on for our website data over the last 10 years, will stop processing data and hits and ultimately come to an end. After that date, GA4 will become the Google Analytics solution. Therefore, we recommend installing the new Google Analytics 4 on your website as soon as possible.)

It’s the stuff of nightmares. You’re back in school, you have a final for a class you’ve been cutting all semester and you are completely unprepared for the exam. Desperately you try to learn the subject matter, but you still go into the classroom certain you are going to fail. Heart racing and soaked in sweat, you wake up in the safety of your own bed. Anxious, disoriented and out of breath you remind yourself, “It was just a dream…It was just a dream…”

What if it’s not just a dream this time though, and you could have been preparing all along? GA4 is the class that none of us registered for, and the switch to GA4 on July 1, 2023 is the final you need to start preparing for today. So, it looks like we’re pulling an all-nighter. Someone brew up a pot of coffee, order a pizza ½ cheese ½ pepperoni, and “Alexa, play Nature Sounds.”

Let’s get to work

The switch over to Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is going to be revolutionary and a little scary all at the same time, but before you do anything it is critical to safeguard your current data before Universal Analytics sunsets and is no longer available. The solution is dual tagging your website to start collecting data in GA4 right away.

Implementing Google Analytics GA4 Tags alongside your current Universal Analytics tags is called dual tagging and your website’s data will be sent concurrently to UA and GA4. Hocus Pocus, you’ve essentially installed a crystal ball on your website as you’ll keep capturing data in the way you’re accustomed to seeing it, but now you also get a glimpse into what to expect in GA4.

Irrespective of when you switch to using GA4 as your exclusive analytics tool, the sooner you begin dual tagging, the more historical data you will have to compare against in the future. Conversely and quite logically, the longer you wait to dual tag, the less data you’ll have.

Two Reasons You Should Be Dual Tagging

Fluency

Think of GA4 as a foreign language. You’re going to want to become as fluent as possible in that language so you can become more familiar with the new data model and features. Dual tagging allows your current UA property to remain your primary “language” until you’re more fluent with GA4 and confident that it’s ready to meet all your reporting needs. As you become more fluent, there are a few key features you’ll want to focus on:

    • Reporting Interface – There are far fewer preset reports in GA4 than there are in Universal Analytics. Don’t panic though, although it does require set-up, GA4 reports will be generated once you start tracking events.
    • Measurement – In Universal Analytics, essentially measure sessions and pageviews, however in GA4 every activity by a user will be measure as an event. This will result in far more details about user engagement with your website.
    • Sessions – In the good ol’ days of Universal Analytics, a session included a mixture of page views, events, and transactions taken by a single user during a particular timeframe. In contrast, not only are Google Analytics 4 sessions not determined by time, but average pages per session is no longer measured in GA4.
    • Bounce Rate and Engagement Rate – No longer will bounce rate be measured. Instead, it will be engagement rate will be the new gold standard in metrics.
    • Data Retention – In UA, you could retain your data anywhere from 14 months to essentially forever. GA4, on the other hand, only gives two options which are 2 months or 14 months. If you are the interested in retaining data long-term for YoY comparison, many are turning to BigQuery. More on this in a future GA4 post.

Historical Data

This is one case where history will not repeat itself. GA4 will not retroactively collect data. It will only collect data beginning with its implementation and will not import the historical data from your UA properties. As we’ve stressed, the sooner you install GA4 on your site, the more data you will collect in GA4. The benefit of this early adoption with strengthen your historical trends and your ability to make decisions based on that data

Next Steps

We recommend installing the new Google Analytics 4 on your website as soon as possible. At Brawn Media, we have a team of analytics experts that can set up and manage your GA4 options or even help with training, so you can depend on your Year over Year website data to effectively guide all your future marketing efforts.

In our next blog post in the GA4 Series, we’ll go into greater depth about how GA4 events are now custom and will need to be created based on website functionality and event objectives.

We’d also like to speak with you after class to discuss your attendance record.