Presentation by Ken Williams and Cory Watson at Columbus Web Analytics Wednesday on 08-Jun-2022. The session was an overview of Google Analytics 4 and the main steps organizations should go through in order to adopt the platform, with Google's Universal Analytics slated to go away in July 2023. Details at https://www.cbuswaw.com/june-2022-google-analytics-4-meetup-and-bonus-seminar

1. Making the
Transition to
Google Analytics 4
What to expect, and how to prepare.
June 8, 2022

3. 4 Reasons Brands Choose Google over Competitors
Privacy Cross-Device Tracking Unmatched Flexibility Integrations
Google has provided the
most robust solution to
cookie-restricted
measurement for
marketers that is available
on the market today.
Google Analytics 4 is built
on Firebase, which allows
it to seamlessly merge
data collected on any
device.
Through a seamless
integration with the
Google Cloud Platform,
Google Analytics 4 sets a
foundation for mature
organizations to build on.
Google’s advertising
products share
conversion, cost, and
audience data with one
another.
New in Google Analytics 4

4. 6 Steps to Transition to
Google Analytics 4
Ken Williams, Search Discovery

5. Set Your Objectives
Step 1

6. What are the most critical conversions or
behaviors (KPI’s) that need to be captured
and readily accessible to your team?
What questions will you or your
stakeholders have about these KPI's that
can be answered using GA4?
Set Your Objectives
Set Your Objectives Design & Document
Configure &
Implement
Test & Deploy
Reporting & Team
Training
Integrations &
Activation
Duration: 2 weeks

7. What are the most critical conversions or
behaviors (KPI’s) that need to be captured
and readily accessible to your team?
What questions will you or your
stakeholders have about these KPI's that
can be answered using GA4?
Set Your Objectives
Set Your Objectives Design & Document
Configure &
Implement
Test & Deploy
Reporting & Team
Training
Integrations &
Activation
Duration: 2 weeks
These will become event names
This will define parameters

8. Design & Document
Step 2

9. Design the events, dimensions and metrics
that should be collected to support your
objectives.
Create a list of tests that can be used to
verify that the tracking is working correctly
when the project is complete.
Design & Document
Set Your Objectives Design & Document
Configure &
Implement
Test & Deploy
Reporting & Team
Training
Integrations &
Activation
Duration: 3 weeks
● Be sure to use recommended events
and follow Google’s naming
conventions for custom events.
● Watch the custom dimension/metric
limits (50/125).
● Your design should consider the
reports you would like to create
once your implementation is
complete.
● Identify the information that should
be made available in the data layer.
● For now, ecommerce sites will need
to get creative to collect product
attributes.

10. Configure & Implement
Step 3

11. Configure & Implement
Set Your Objectives Design & Document
Configure &
Implement
Test & Deploy
Reporting & Team
Training
Integrations &
Activation
Duration: 2-7 weeks
Work with the development teams to install
Mobile SDK or data layer requirements in a
staging environment.
For web, a tag manager can be used to
greatly reduce effort from development
teams.
● Design your account/property
structure (subproperties and
rollups).
● Enable consent mode if you use a
cookie consent manager.
● Configure a server-side Google Tag
Manager container to enable longer
cookie duration and faster page load
speed.
● Enable the property settings,
conversions, and custom definitions
that were defined in step 2.

12. Test & Deploy
Step 4

13. Test & Deploy
Set Your Objectives Design & Document
Configure &
Implement
Test & Deploy
Reporting & Team
Training
Integrations &
Activation
Duration: 2-3 weeks
Confirm that your tests are all functioning
as expected.
Deploy the new tracking code to your
production environments and run through
all of your tests one final time.
● Validating mobile app data can
be complex, but GA4 has a new
report that can help called
DebugView.
● Beware that AMP pages are
not currently supported in
GA4.

14. Reporting & Team Training
Step 5

15. Reporting & Team Training
Set Your Objectives Design & Document
Configure &
Implement
Test & Deploy
Reporting & Team
Training
Integrations &
Activation
Duration: 1 week
Configure the property settings,
conversions, and custom definitions that
were defined in step 2 to support your
business needs.
Create the standard reports/dashboards,
and conduct the training necessary to
support your business.
● Reporting has changed and some
standard reports have been
removed.
● Analysts will need to be retrained.
● Be aware that goals have been
replaced with conversion events.
● Enabling the BigQuery integration
will help Analysts understand how
data is collected, stored and queried.
● Any applications built on the
BigQuery exports will need to be
rebuilt.
○ Same for reports built on the
API (such as DataStudio)

16. Integrations & Activation
Step 6

17. Integrations & Activation
Set Your Objectives Design & Document
Configure &
Implement
Test & Deploy
Reporting & Team
Training
Integrations &
Activation
Duration: 1 week
The final step is to configure your
integrations so that Google Analytics 4 can
share data with other products.
This step will allow you to conduct
advanced analysis and activate on the
audiences created in GA4.
● The BigQuery integration is now
available for free!
○ Integrate GA4 with your data
warehouse.
○ Conduct cross-channel
analysis or customer
behavior modeling.
○ Build robust audiences and
push into Google API’s
● The Salesforce integrations are not
available for GA4 yet.
● The Campaign Manager integration
is not available for GA4 yet.
● A more robust DV360 integration is
coming soon.

18. Maximize the value of GA4
by integrating it with the full
Google ecosystem of
products.

19. searchdiscovery.com/ga4-migration

20. Set Your Objectives Design & Document
Configure &
Implement
Test & Deploy
Reporting & Team
Training
Integrations &
Activation
Typical Duration: 11-17 weeks

21. Where to go from here
Data Capture &
Measurement
Infrastructure
Dedicated Support
1st Party Data
Integration &
Advanced Analysis
Audience Activation
& Bid to Value
Our solutions are designed to help you progressively mature your Analytics program,
from basic data collection to advanced audience segmentation and activation.

22. Questions?