What is the most special thing
that happened to you within the last few weeks?
In my case, it's Measure Camp in Berlin.
A big shout out to everyone who.
Made this happen and to all the participants.
And I had a chance to make a presentation there with which inspired this video.
I would love to share seven things.
I've learned using GA4.
So, lesson number one,
one to one migration is not possible, especially within 1 hour.
And this one is a real pain in the neck, I have to say, because many clients tend
to think that it is possible, it simply isn't.
And clients have to accept it.
So we cannot feed them with empty promises about one to one migration.
It is not possible technically.
And I cannot say I feel enthusiastic about the word migration itself,
because GA4 is a new tool with a different data model.
And this is why correct expectations should be set at the very first moment we
start talking about GA4 to our clients.
And here you can see a nice checklist provided by Google.
So this is a nice guide to check if your GA4 properties set up correctly.
But the migration process itself is way
more complex and the clients tend to be in the dark area right now when it comes
to implementation, and they trust us and rely on our knowledge and advice.
And this is why correct expectations
should be set at the very first moment we started talking about GA4.
Okay, let's move to the second lesson, which is save your data.
Once your GA4 account is created, and if we go to data settings and Data
retention, you can see that by default, retention is two months.
And if you do not change it to 14 months, you might lose some critical features.
Don't be afraid, your standard reports will not be affected anyhow.
But let's say you want to prepare for your annual final sale looking back
at the performance over the last few years, and this would not really be
possible beyond the basic reports that are provided in the GA4 UI.
But one of the options here,
we can go beyond this limit by connecting GA4 for it to BigQuery.
However, many clients feel somehow unconvinced to use it, maybe yet.
Okay, lesson number three, Goals Migration tool is not very helpful,
and this might be a very strong statement, but let's go back to our setup assistant.
And here we have this tool.
You can use this one.
And this is exactly what I mean.
Of course, you could use this for a quick
migration of course if you need something to be done immediately.
in a kind of superficial level, but if you want to have control over your
tracking, this is definitely not the best option.
And many clients also tend to stick
to the old event model, trying to recreate category action and label.
I'm not sure which method you're using when you set up your event parameters.
So please drop a line in the comments.
I really want to know how you're approaching event implementation.
And I really like the words Mikko Piippo used
in his LinkedIn post declutter and refactor.
So now we have a golden opportunity
to audit our setups, identify what has value, and remove all the trash so
for example, we can replace custom HTML
with templates in the tag manager or get rid of orphan variables.
So it's a good chance to start from scratch and define a strategy.
Okay, so lesson number four,
user ID should not be registered as a custom dimension.
And we're using this feature at MeasureSchool.
And I implemented user ID around one year ago and I added it as a custom dimension
as I wanted to work with it in the export section.
However, I ran into an issue.
Then I found this Google article and as you can see, such dimensions like user ID,
so called high cardinality dimensions, and they should not be set up as custom
dimensions because this might have a negative impact on your reports.
And specifically, this might cause data to aggregate under the other row.
And Google recommends to use the user ID feature as
you can see it here.
Well, let me know if someone also
implemented user ID and how you approach this one.
Lesson number five, event parameters might mysteriously not show up.
My colleague and I were troubleshooting
case and we discovered an interesting thing.
The parameters were set up in the GTM, yet nothing was showing up in the debug view.
Why did this happen?
Well, if you have a parameter set up here,
but for some reason it has an undefined value, analytics will simply drop it.
Or another reason could be if you go
to analytics and if you use modify event feature here, let's go to configure.
And this is exactly this one.
And if you just set up something here,
this will override the initial setup in the tag manager.
So these are good points to know.
Lesson number six, you can customize your reporting interface in GA4.
This is a cool feature.
So if we go to reports here,
we have a library and we have a possibility to create our
own collection or to edit the existing one, so
for example, here you could remove some of the reports,
or you can add the reports you would love to have so
I think this is a super cool feature of GA4.
Okay, so let's move to lesson number seven.
And this one is tools and extensions can be true time savers.
Of course you can do the hardcore way
and set up everything on your own, but there are so many tools and extensions
being rolled out and they are created to simplify our workflow.
And I would love to show you one which I
find extremely useful and it's called dataga4spy.
And you can see that this is
Google Analytics Dimensions and Metrics cheat sheet.
And I know metrics and dimensions can be kind of confusing in GA4,
and to be honest, I don't know all dimensions and metrics by heart.
And we are constantly getting questions
from clients and also in the community.
What is source and what is session source in GA4?
What is the difference between total users and active users?
How is an engaged session determined?
And this tool can be really helpful because, for example,
we can click on any dimension here and you can get a description of this
dimension and you can also see if this dimension is available in Data Studio.
So I think this is an amazing tool.
So I hope you're enjoying your GA4 adventure.
By the way, do you see my t shirt?
This is for the chosen ones only.
For true GA4 and GTM enthusiasts.
And you can also win one.
Everything you have to do is to write your comments with three key findings.
Based on your experience with GA4.
And in two weeks we'll randomly select.
And announce the winners in one of our upcoming videos.
So please give us a thumbs up and see you next time.