Case Study: Increasing Our Clients’ Confidence With Google Analytics 4 Training

Overview 

Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is at the forefront of everyone’s minds at the moment.  On the 1st of July, Universal Analytics (UA) will stop processing data. So over the last few months, our priority has been to give our clients more confidence about transitioning to using GA4 as their new, main source of digital marketing intelligence. 

That’s why we developed a Google Analytics 4 training course for entry-level users. The course provides our trainees with an overview of how the property works and the main differences between UA and GA4, along with some hands-on exercises so they can see the property in action. 

The course has been a great starting point in our clients’ learning journey because it has helped them feel more confident with beginning to use GA4. They are able to get a good understanding of the key concepts, and are able to use that information to structure the next steps of their learning plan. 

Since October 2022, we’ve had 4 training sessions with 4 different clients and as a result of our training, they now have:

• Increased confidence in using GA4 for reporting
• Foundational knowledge about the key concepts
• An understanding of how the property will be useful for their business
• An understanding of the key differences between UA and GA4
• Awareness of how the differences between GA4 and UA will impact their business

If you’re looking for support with GA4, you can find out more about our GA4 services here. Alternatively, you can book in a free consultancy call with our GA4 experts here. We’d love to help!

Our GA4 Training:

Our GA4 training is divided into four 1-hour sessions, with exercises in between to help our trainees cement their new-found knowledge. The first two sessions are theoretical, and the last two are practical, with the majority of the time being spent inside the property. 

Our training is great for small teams who want a more intimate session. That’s because we’re able to cover more personal questions, as well as those that may be too confidential to ask in a larger course or training session involving other businesses.   

Our training covers the following topics:

• Differences between UA and GA4
• Event-based measurement model 
• How to use data modelling for estimating conversions
• Property settings
• Metrics and dimensions
• Default channel grouping
• Reports and how to personalise them 
• Cross-channel, data-driven attribution model
• Audiences, segments and comparisons 
• How to build explorations
• How all of these changes will impact businesses

By going through each of the topics above, we’ve been able to empower our clients to know the type of data that is available to them, and to get them thinking critically about how they can use the new GA4 tools to find and report on that data. 

Examples of Key Learnings

Here are a couple of examples of some of the key learnings that our clients have taken away from our GA4 training sessions: 

Attribution 

Understanding the different attribution models is crucial when you want to compare how data-driven attribution will change the way you report on conversions. 

With UA, businesses were reporting on last non-direct click by default. This meant the channels that played a part in the beginning and middle of the user journey weren’t receiving credit for their role in the conversion. 

The data-driven model in GA4 uses machine-learning to attribute credit for the conversions based on the interaction of each channel throughout the user journey. 

By taking our clients through this, we’ve been able to help them to understand how this makes channel-level conversion reporting fairer, as all channels will be considered for getting credit. This means that in the future, our clients will be able to identify which channels are performing best and adjust their marketing strategy accordingly. 

Table adapted from source

Segments, Audiences & Comparisons 

We’ve also been able to help our clients understand the differences between segments, audiences and comparisons. During our training, we define each, so our trainees can understand how they differ and overlap. 

We spent one of our sessions focusing on these key concepts because we wanted our trainees to know when to choose each of the options. For example, if they wanted to create a subset of users who they can advertise to, they should create an audience. If they wanted to create an exploration to learn more about a subset of users, they should create a segment, and so on. 

Table adapted from source

Results

After four sessions, our clients feel more confident about using GA4 for reporting,  and have successfully built their foundational knowledge about key concepts. Some had many years of experience using UA, but they now know the differences between it and GA4, and how that’ll impact their business. That’s allowed them to adjust their expectations when measuring performance.

Even though our training won’t be the only step they need to take when learning about GA4, it was a good introduction. It’s empowered them to define the next steps in their training plans based on the needs of their role and personal ambitions.

Don’t just take our word for it, here’s what they had to say: 

Contact Us

If you and your team are struggling to use GA4 and you want to know more about our training course, and how we could help you and your team, please don’t hesitate to get in touch. 

Give us a call on 01273 733433 or leave us a message via the form below. We’d love to help!