Feature
Google made a splash with its announcement of a sunsetting Universal Analytics for GA4. Now the focus turns to easing the transition marketers must make with their analytics settings.
To help, Google is introducing a migration tool that allows existing goals in Universal Analytics to be imported into Google Analytics 4. The tool is meant to speed the set up process for analytic reporting as much as ease marketers' concerns for a full transition to GA4.
Why the Focus on Goals?
To understand the significance of reporting goal migration, let's take a quick refresher on what goals are in relation to Google Analytics. Goals are an objective setting in Google Analytics. For me, this is a big pause on how far analytics has come. Goals has been a long standing GA feature that users add. Its general function is to allow analysts to rank website traffic or app user activity according to a revenue value. Doing this creates a business-quality comparison between pages and page activity.
For example, the blog posts that contribute to goals the most is your most influential, so you can decide how to leverage that information, be it through ad camapign choices or updates to your site content.
Today Google has moved away from user-set goals in its GA4 report settings — I explain that history in this post. GA4 places a strong emphasis on machine learning and customization for attribution reporting features such as conversion path analysis and modeled conversions.
Related Article: Google's Move Away From Universal Analytics: What It Means for Digital Marketers
Where to Get Started
You can access the migration tool under your GA4 admin settings. You enter your desired account property as an editor role (everyone who can access a GA account has a role with permission for certain features). You navigate to the Setup Assistant tab, clicking it under the Conversions section to access it. You will see a selection button called "Import existing goals from your connected Universal Analytics property." Click it to start the process.
When the process begins, Google will access the goals set within all your property views. You then select which goals you’d like to recreate as conversion events in your new Google Analytics 4 property. For each eligible Universal Analytics goal you select, the goals migration tool automatically creates a new event rule in your connected Google Analytics 4 propert, and then marks the created event as a conversion.
What Goals Can Do in GA4
Two goal types can be migrated using the tool — Destination goal, in which a user lands on a specific page, such as a “thank you” or “confirmation” page;s and Event goal, in which a user triggers a specific on-page activity, such as social recommendation, video play, or ad click.
A confirmation message in the bottom left of your screen when your selected goals have been successfully recreated as conversion events in your Google Analytics 4 property. You now have a migrated account.
Learning Opportunities
Webinar
Jun
6
The Future of Social Media: Emerging Trends and How to Stay Ahead of the Curve
The impact of emerging technologies like AI on social media
Webinar
Jun
7
The Building Blocks of Personalization
This webinar will explore how personalization can create powerful ecommerce shopping experience.
Webinar
Jun
8
Attracting—and Keeping—Your High-Net-Worth Investors
Join PwC to dissect their recent survey findings on a specific customer subset — high-net-worth investors.
Webinar
Jun
13
The Future of Contact Centers with AI at the Helm
Learn how to balance human intuition and interaction with the potential uses of AI to create delightful and lasting CX
Webinar
Jun
20
3 Steps to Unlock Your Customer Data and Drive Revenue
Discover how Twilio Segment’s #1 Customer Data Platform helps implement data-driven strategies.
Webinar
On demand
AI for Marketers: Optimize Personalization Across the Funnel
Understand the benefits of utilizing AI across your entire marketing stack
The other goals of Universal Analytics — Pages/Screens per session goals, Duration goals, Smart goals, and any goal that uses regular expressions — can not be migrated through the tool. The value of these are very specific purpose, so it makes some sense. But I do wish the regular expression goal would have been imported, since regular expressions require some trial and error to get right.
Related Article: How Marketers Should Prepare for Google's Universal Analytics 2023 Sunset
Message to Marketers
So what should marketers do in the conversion tool? In planning there should be documentation of what decisions you currently using Google Analytics data. Changing analytics is usually associated with updating website content, since so many events are linked to customer engagement with the content. So a migration is a terrific opportunity to gather your team and highlight what objectives should be continued.
Because the tool accesses all your views, you will want to ask your team how they feel about any of the current goals and views. Should they be continued? You should ask what was being measured and does it give continued value to enrich or speed up decisions.
Use the moment to solicit colleague comments about metrics and reporting that may have been a sticking point or a dashboard need to support an objective. Some observation may still remain "pinned" with no immediate action. But observations from metrics can lead to useful insights for setting up events in Google Analytics that can meet partway, or seeking support through Google Data Studio or an augmenting dashboard where the data is exported. So, a transition can be a building point to strengthen analytics for your team all around.
In the meantime, marketers should expect more interesting updates from Google as it sunset Universal Analytics.
