A 7-step guide to a successful transition from Universal Analytics to Google Analytics 4
Roughly a year after introducing its next-generation Google Analytics 4 (GA4) platform, Google officially announced it will sunset the widely used Universal Analytics (UA) platform in July 2023. The UA sunset gives a definitive urgency to the migration to GA4. But as GA4’s next-generation capabilities for cross-channel, cookieless measurement advance, savvy organizations are fast-tracking the transition to build competitive advantage in the new digital marketing landscape.
Delve recently released our Top 5 Media Trends for 2022 report, pulling together insights from internal experts and innovative thinkers in the industry. Here are the quick highlights:
Key dates in the UA sunset timeline
- Existing UA properties will stop collecting new hits on July 1, 2023.
- Historical data will be available for at least six months, but chances are good that Google will delete historical UA data from its servers after this period.
- Businesses using UA have 15 months to complete a full migration from UA to GA4 — and 21 months migrate the previously collected UA data.
How GA4 gives marketers an edge in a cookieless, cross-channel, privacy-centric future
Where UA was built for a desktop-centric era that relied heavily on cookies to drive segmentation and measurement, GA4 is built for the future of data-driven marketing. It’s designed from the ground up to operate across platforms, to measure and track in a cookieless world using event-based data to accurately measure cross-platform user journeys.
Google has greatly expanded the enhanced capabilities of GA4 in the year since its introduction — and we expect that pace of improvement to accelerate. These capabilities align with the new paradigm of data privacy — giving marketers the tools they need to make genuine, personalized and relevant connections with customers, while meeting customer expectations and regulatory requirements around data privacy.
With the digital environment increasingly demanding cookieless, cross-channel journey personalization, the reality is that Universal Analytics will become an increasingly outdated and less-effective tool — regardless of its turn-off date. Moreover, there are major competitive advantages to getting ahead of this shift — planning and scaling up use of GA4 sooner rather than later.
Simplifying the shift from UA to GA4: A 7-step guide
Change is always scary and often difficult. So, it’s no surprise that many businesses are apprehensive about the complexities of migrating from the Universal Analytics platform — reluctant to move from tools they know and functionality they’ve mastered to a familiar-yet-different toolkit.
Fortunately, Delve has already helped several forward-thinking organizations scale up their use of GA4’s powerful new capabilities. We’ve honed this proven experience into a simple, seven-step guide that provides a robust framework for a smooth and successful migration.
What’s next: GA4 Property Creation and Data Collection Enablement
Creating the framework or architecture for measurement in GA4 is just the first step. In our next installment in our seven-part series, we’ll dive into how to create properties in GA4, configure settings, and more. We encourage you to check out the full Google Analytics 4 Migration Guide here:
Anton Dolgiy
Team Lead, Analytics Tech