As the world of digital marketing evolves, so do the analytics that helps track our progress. Marketers must stay up-to-date on all the features available to measure their success and make data-driven decisions that ultimately benefit their business. One of the most used tools for web analytics is Google Analytics (GA).
Google recently released an updated version called Google Analytics 4 (GA4) which offers new features and improved insights into customer behaviour. This article will dive deeply into the must-use features of the new GA4 platform, which is explicitly designed to help online businesses grow and scale.
1. Predictive Analysis
Predictive analysis is one of the exciting new features of GA4. It flexes its machine learning and artificial intelligence abilities by putting them to good use. Once you set up purchase events, Google begins gathering the data to create predictive user audiences. When populated, you can use this to compare in your analysis.
2. Enhanced Measurement
One of the core benefits of GA4 is its enhanced measurement capabilities. It provides more detailed insights into customer activity on your website with events-based analytics. Events are simply actions visitors take while they navigate your website, such as pressing a button, playing a video, or completing a purchase. You get an in-depth look at user engagement using event optimisation, like time spent on pages, scroll depth, and outbound links clicked.
3. Cross-Platform and App Tracking
Another great feature of GA4 is its ability to track customer activity across multiple devices, including desktop, mobile, and tablet computers and iOS and Android apps. With this insight, you can better understand how users interact with your brand, whether it is through organic search or paid media campaigns like display ads or social ads. Also, you can check if customers are coming from different sources like emails or affiliate links.
4. Data Analysis Tools
The enhanced reporting capabilities of GA4 make it easier for busy marketers to analyse data quickly and accurately without spending hours in front of spreadsheets sifting through numbers manually. The dashboard provides insights like user flow analysis, active users by device, location, timeframe, or source, goal performance overviews, sessions over time graphs, audience cohorts, and segmentation options based on custom events. These are all easily accessible from one interface.
5. Custom Audience Targeting
With GA4, you can now leverage its influential audience targeting capabilities to reach more potential customers faster with hyper-relevant content tailored just for them. Custom audiences can create segments based on demographics such as age range, gender, and interests. More so, you can target people who have visited particular sections or pages on your website before to draw them back in again.
6. Automated Insights and Alerts
Another great feature of GA4 is that it has automated insights and alerts included within it. This helps ensure marketers do not miss critically important information about their business performance when compared against objectives set beforehand. You can send these automated notifications straight to email inboxes, ensuring that everybody stays up-to-date on changes in customer behaviour, like sudden spikes or drops in traffic sources.
7. Real-Time Performance Monitoring
GA4 gives marketers unprecedented visibility into customer journeys with its real-time monitoring feature. It means they do not have to wait until after business hours have passed before seeing changes in visitor behaviour patterns across any selected time frames. Also, GA4 allows quick, actionable insights that help inform future strategies, enabling smarter decisions every step along the way.
8. Integrated Ecommerce Platforms
Finally, one last key benefit to using Google Analytics’ latest platform is its ability to integrate directly with eCommerce platforms due to advancements made upon universal identifiers added recently by Google. It allows tracking orders and sales conversions to be more accessible than ever before. In addition, customers who bought items are tracked down directly from original advertising clicks, maintaining accuracy levels.
Takeaway
Generally speaking, GA4 offers many practical solutions for measuring success within digital marketing efforts quicker and more innovative. It may not be everyone’s favourite platform, but it offers several new useful features that can help you perform your tasks more efficiently. GA4 is versatile, so you can use it for information gathering on different devices and websites. Hence, upgrade to GA4 today and take advantage of these excellent features!