Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a free web analytics tool offered by Google that allows website and app owners to know and analyze traffic from their platforms. This online solution collects data about user visits and interactions on a website or app and presents this information in detailed, easy-to-understand reports. Google Analytics is widely used in the world of digital marketing to measure the performance of marketing campaigns through web analytics and to better understand the behavior of users and customers.

The purpose of Google Analytics is to provide information about who the visitors to a web page or application are, how they arrived on the platform (for example, through a search engine, a link on another website, an advertising campaign), what they do when they are on the platform (the pages they visit, the time they spend, the actions they take) and whether they complete desired actions (such as making a purchase or subscribing to a newsletter).

Google Analytics Features

Google Analytics offers a wide range of features and capabilities that allow digital marketers to gain detailed insight into traffic and user behavior on their websites or apps.

• Audience analysis: Google Analytics provides detailed information about visitors, including their geographic location, the device they use, their age and gender, and their interests, among other data.
• Acquisition analysis: This feature shows how visitors come to the platform, whether through organic search, paid search, referrals, social media, or directly.
• Behavioral analysis: This feature allows you to see what visitors are doing on the website or app, such as the pages they visit, the time they spend on the site, and the actions they take.
• Conversion analysis: This feature allows website and app owners to measure the performance of their business goals such as sales, app downloads, newsletter subscriptions, etc.

Advantages of Google Analytics

The use of Google Analytics in a digital marketing strategy presents numerous benefits. Among them are:

• Detailed information about visitors: Google Analytics offers valuable information about visitors, which can help you better understand your audience and personalize your marketing strategy.
• Measuring the performance of marketing campaigns: With Google Analytics, it is possible to measure the performance of different marketing campaigns and acquisition channels, which allows you to optimize marketing investments.
• Identification of popular pages and content: Google Analytics allows you to identify the pages and content that generate more traffic and engagement, which can be useful for the creation of future content.
• Improved user experience: Thanks to the information on user behavior provided by Google Analytics, it is possible to identify areas for improvement on the website or application to improve the user experience.

How to use Google Analytics

To use Google Analytics, you need to create a Google Analytics account and set up a property for the website or app you want to analyze. Next, you need to install the Google Analytics tracking code on all pages of the website or in the app. Once the tracking code is in place, Google Analytics will start collecting data about visits and interactions on the website or app.

Google Analytics presents the collected data in a series of reports accessible from the account dashboard. These reports can be customized to show the most relevant information for each user, and alerts can be configured to receive notifications about important changes in traffic or user behavior.

Google Analytics 4

Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is the latest version of this popular web analytics tool released in October 2020. GA4, also known as "App + Web" during its beta phase, represents a significant shift in the way Google collects and analyzes user data. Compared to previous versions of Google Analytics, GA4 focuses more on event tracking and less on user sessions.

Key differences between GA4 and earlier versions

In previous versions of Google Analytics, user tracking was mostly session-based, i.e. every time a user visited a website, Google Analytics recorded a new "session" and all actions taken during that session were grouped together.

In GA4, tracking is event-driven. This means that each action taken by a user on a website is recorded as an individual event. This change allows for more detailed and customizable tracking of user behavior.

Other notable differences of GA4 include:

• Improved integration with Google Ads: GA4 enables more accurate tracking of Google Ads campaigns, including the ability to measure conversions at the event level.
• Tracking users across devices: GA4 allows users to be tracked across multiple devices, providing a more complete view of user behavior.
• Advanced attribution modeling: GA4 offers new attribution modeling capabilities that allow you to assign credit for conversions to different touchpoints in the customer journey.

Migrating to Google Analytics 4

Google has announced that GA4 is the future of Google Analytics, and website and app owners are advised to start using GA4 alongside their current version of Google Analytics. To do this, you can set up a GA4 property next to the existing property in your Google Analytics account and start collecting data in both properties.

Migrating to GA4 may require some initial effort to set up event tracking and customize reports, but in the long run, it offers a more complete and accurate view of user behavior, which can help improve digital marketing strategy.