If you're looking to get started with GA4, Google Analytics
4, you're in the right place!
I'm going to show you how to set up GA4 and install it on your
website using Google Tag Manager.
And I'm also going to introduce you to the standard reports.
I'm Benjamin from Loves Data, and I'm here to help you get the
most out of Google Analytics.
It's actually the perfect time to add the latest version of Google
Analytics to your website because in mid-2023, the previous version,
Universal Analytics, will stop working.
Before we walk through the steps to set up a new GA4 property, I want to cover
some of the main features and benefits and also briefly compare GA4 to the
previous version of Google Analytics.
Benefits of GA4 include.
A new flexible data model, that gives you control over the information
you send to Google analytics and how it appears in your reports.
New customization options, including the ability to customize the standard reports.
Automatic tracking of important actions people take on your website.
Including when people scroll, watch embedded YouTube videos,
click outbound, links and more.
A number of new reports.
If you have a website and an app you can consolidate data
into a single set of reports.
And built-in machine learning which drives automated insights,
new predictive metrics, and more.
Okay, now that we've covered key benefits of GA4, let's compare some of
the most important differences between GA4 and Universal Analytics, so the
previous version of Google Analytics.
GA4 has a limited number of pre-configured reports.
While Universal Analytics has a wider range of standard reports.
GA4 introduces more ad-hoc reporting options to meet your needs.
You can filter out internal traffic in both versions of Analytics.
GA4 includes automatic tracking of important actions, while
Universal Analytics doesn't.
And you can adjust the attribution model used for the standard reports in GA4.
And here we can see a number of features that are available in both versions.
We can configure cross-domain tracking.
This is actually easier in GA4.
We can link to Google Ads and other Google products.
We can import additional data into our reports.
And we can connect Google Analytics to Looker Studio, previously
called Google Data Studio.
So that's a brief summary of the most important differences between Google
Analytics 4 and Universal Analytics.
If you're already using Universal Analytics, then I recommend setting
up GA4 in parallel to your existing Universal Analytics property.
If you're not currently using Universal Analytics, then I recommend only setting
up GA4 as it's the latest version.
Okay, let's head to Google Analytics to see how we can identify which
type of property we're using.
I've already logged in, and we can see there are three columns.
There is the account column on the left, then the property column in the
middle, and a view column on the right.
Since there are three columns, this immediately tells us that we're looking
at a Universal Analytics property.
So this is the previous version of Google Analytics.
Now let's select another property.
We can see there are only two columns.
There is an account column on the left, a property column in the middle, and
there is no view column on the right.
This means we're now looking at a GA4 property.
So this is the latest version of Google Analytics.
Okay, so if you've found that you already have a Universal analytics
property, then I suggest you keep this and setup GA4 in parallel.
So let's head back to my Universal Analytics property.
At the top of the property column we can see the 'GA4 Setup Assistant'.
You can use this option to either create a new GA4 property or
connect your existing Universal Analytics property to a GA4 property.
This is designed to provide a sort of migration path for Universal
Analytics with some guided steps.
You can use this option if you like, but personally, I've found it more
confusing than starting from scratch.
And I've seen it cause issues for other people.
So we're going to create a brand new GA4 property.
Let's look at how to do this.
Instead of using the 'Setup Assistant', let's just click the
'Create Property' button at the top.
First, we need to name our new GA4 property.
You can name your property anything you like, but I'm going
to name mine 'Loves Data GA4'.
Then we need to select our reporting time zone.
And currency.
Now let's click 'Next'.
We can then provide some details about our business.
These are optional, so I'm just going to click 'Create' at the bottom.
Now we need to create our data stream.
A data stream is used to send data to GA4.
Once we create a stream it will mean we can either add the Google Tag for the
stream to our website, or we can use the measurement ID for the stream to
configure a tag in Google Tag Manager.
Since we're tracking a website, let's select 'Web'.
Now we need to enter the URL of our website.
And name the stream.
We can also see 'Enhanced Measurement' is enabled.
This feature automatically tracks important actions on your website.
We can click the configuration icon to see what will be automatically tracked.
And if there are any actions you don't want to track, you can disable them here.
Let's close this.
And let's click 'Create Stream'.
We can see our data stream has been created.
We can now copy the 'Measurement ID' on the top right corner and add this to
our website using Google Tag Manager.
If you're not using Google Tag Manager on your website, then now
is probably a good time to migrate your tracking code to tag manager.
Using Google Tag Manager makes it easier if you want to install
multiple tags on your website.
You can also use tag manager to configure more advanced tracking,
and in most cases you won't need to modify any code on your website.
If you want to learn more about Google Tag Manager, then check out my extra resources
in the description below this video.
Okay, now that we've copied the 'measurement ID', let's
head to Google Tag Manager.
Since I'm already using Google Tag Manager on my website, I just need to
add an additional tag to my container.
Let's create a new tag.
Let's name the tag 'Google Analytics GA4 Page View'.
And select 'GA4 configuration' as the tag type.
Then we paste the measurement ID into the tag configuration.
And now we need to select a trigger for the tag.
Let's select 'all pages'.
This will fire the tag on all the pages of our website.
Let's save the tag.
We can now click 'Submit' to publish the changes to our website.
Let's head to our website and reload the page.
This will trigger the new tag and begin collecting data into our new property.
To view the reports we can now head back to Google Analytics.
Let's navigate to 'Reports'.
And let's navigate to the 'Realtime' report.
We can now see data is beginning to be collected into our reports.
To start exploring the reports, we're going to use Google's demo property.
So let's open the demo property.
On the left, we can navigate between the different reports.
First is 'Home'.
This provides a top-level summary for your website.
It's also automatically personalized, so it will show you reports
you've recently viewed, along with other automated insights.
'Reports' lets you view pre-configured reports.
This includes dedicated reports showing you how people find your website,
what pages they've viewed, if they've converted, plus demographics and
details about the devices they're using.
'Explore' lets you create custom reports, and you can
visualize data in different ways.
For example, you can create simple tables, funnel visualizations, and more.
'Advertising' lets you view the dedicated attribution reports.
This is where you can see the relationship between your different
marketing channels and how they lead to conversions on your website.
'Configure' is where you can customize data that is included in your reports.
For example, this is where we will configure conversions.
And finally, on the bottom left corner is 'Admin'.
This lets us access additional settings for our account and property.
Let's select 'Reports'.
Then 'Acquisition'.
And 'Acquisition Overview'.
The acquisition reports are all about how people are finding the website.
Traveling down, we can then see how new users are finding the website.
Now let's select 'Engagement'.
And then 'Pages and Screens'.
This report shows you the pages people are viewing on your website.
Looking at the table, we can see pages are reported based on their page title.
And the report is ordered by the number of views, so the
number of page views by default.
Let's select the default dimension.
And change this to 'Page Path'.
This now shows us the pages based on their URL.
It's showing us everything after our website's domain.
If you've been using Universal Analytics, this is like the
default 'All Pages' report.
Now let's select 'Demographics'.
And 'Demographics Overview'.
This report shows you a top-level summary about the people viewing your website.
We can see where they're geographically located by country.
The cities they're located in.
And their language preference, based on the settings on the device they are using.
Once you've collected some data, I recommend taking some time to explore
the reports in your GA4 property.
We've now covered how to start using GA4.
When you're ready to learn even more about the latest version of Google
Analytics, you can watch my full GA4 tutorial, and join my GA4 courses.
I've included links to these and my other resources in the
description below this video.
And if you haven't already, please take a moment to subscribe to my
channel for all of my latest tutorials.
Thanks for watching and I'll see you in the next video!