Case Study: Navigating Our Clients Through the UA to GA4 Transition
Overview
When Google announced that they would sunset Universal Analytics (UA) in favour of Google Analytics 4 (GA4) in March 2022, it was clear that we needed to create a plan for our clients. The transition would happen in a little over a year (July 2023), so it was important that our clients felt confident about the transition.
At SiteVisibility, our Measurement & Insight (M&I) team is responsible for enhancing data accuracy and insight, so we can be data-led across all services. The M&I team got to work, scoping our client’s needs and creating a plan of action for this transition.
This process included:
- Agreement on a robust transition plan with each client
- Support from the M&I team, who joined the account calls to answer questions during the transition
- GA4 training to enable them to use the new platform confidently
Our Approach to the Transition From UA to GA4
The first step was to guarantee that all clients were collecting data in their GA4 properties as soon as possible. This ensured that they had at least a year’s worth of data collected before their UA property stopped processing new data.
This allowed us to have more time to scope their needs and devise a plan of action, which was adapted based on the type of business (e-commerce or lead generation) and whether they had any bespoke needs. We divided the plan between expectations and actions.
The expectations tab allowed us to have a shared resource with the client that detailed which department was responsible for each aspect of the transition and what they should expect from their account team. The 5 examples below were extracted from a list of 23 expectations.
The action plan consisted of a more granular view of all the work that needed to be completed, along with a deadline for implementation. We’ve detailed some action examples below:
- Configure the property settings.
- Connect GA4 to any other Google platforms the client uses, e.g. Google Ads, Google Search Console.
- Configure and test events to measure the most important user actions.
- Start including GA4 data in their monthly report, so they can get accustomed to the new metrics and dimensions before the transition is complete.
- Tailor the reporting dashboard to include only relevant metrics, dimensions and visualisations.
- Deliver a summary of implementation that future-proofs their implementation.
To build their confidence, we also provided them with our entry-level GA4 training. This consisted of four 1-hour sessions, during which clients could see examples from their properties during the practical exercises. If you want to learn more about our GA4 training services, click here.
When July 1st 2023 approached, the M&I team joined the account calls regularly to answer any questions. At this point, our plans were complete, and we were fully using GA4 to assess performance.
In the end, all clients completed the transition and are now using GA4 confidently in their day-to-day operations.
Results
Once implemented, our solutions enabled our clients to:
- Feel supported in the transition from UA to GA4
- Build knowledge about GA4 ahead of the transition
- Have the right expectations throughout the process
If you don’t feel confident about your GA4 configuration, it’s not too late for you. Have a read through our case study of how we helped Fastmarkets by auditing their GA4 property. We’d love to help!
SiteVisibility’s robust GA4 Audit and implementation have given us confidence in our data. We can now find the information we need to truly understand how our website and marketing are performing. Our data governance has significantly improved, which makes it much easier for all of my team to use GA4 confidently.
Contact Us
If you and your team are struggling to transition from UA to GA4, leave us a message via the contact form below or call us on 01273 733433.