GA4: what we know so far & Dashthis updates

In October 2020, Google made a pretty big announcement concerning Google Analytics. It’s new version, GA4 would become the default when setting up a new property, and invites users to upgrade from earlier versions. Here’s what was said at the time :

“Because the technology landscape continues to evolve, the new Analytics is designed to adapt to a future with or without cookies or identifiers. It uses a flexible approach to measurement, and in the future, will include modeling to fill in the gaps where the data may be incomplete“

- Vidhya Srinivasan, Google

As of now, here’s what we know :

• You will be able to use Universal Analytics (UA) until 1st July 2023
• From 1st July 2023, you will only be able to view collected data on Universal Analytics for six months
• Businesses are expected to have switched to GA4 by 1st October 2023

Still clueless about GA4? Not to worry, we have prepared a guide that we will constantly update in the next weeks as Google analytics comes out with more information. In this guide, we will learn all about GA4, features, benefits, and how DashThis is planning on keeping up with this integration. 

• What is GA4
• - Key features and benefits
• GA4 X Dashthis
• - Dashthis's GA4 beta version
• Before you go...

What is GA4?

GA4 is the latest version of Google Analytics (GA) and it’s been renamed mostly for clarity and new updated features. All Universal Analytics (UA) properties can be updated to GA4, where a new Analytics property will be created to collect all data from your current GA account.

Key features and benefits

• Better and easier reporting

Google Analytics previously had only the Acquisition Report, but now, the goal is to simplify the process of tracking a customer throughout a marketing funnel with 3 other sections, all under a “Life Cycle” umbrella 

• Acquisition
• Engagement
• Monetization
• Retention

Another new feature is the “Analysis” section, which helps analyze conversion funnels, cohort analysis, user journey, and more. 

• Deeper audience integration

Significantly reduce ad spend with the new audience feature that helps you create and update audience lists in much more detail. For example, if a user is on your Google Ads audience, they will automatically be removed from this list once they have completed your targeted goal for a specific campaign.

GA4 X DashThis

Alright, where does Dashthis fit in all of this? If you are a Dashthis user, you know that we offer Google Analytics as one of our main integration. 

As of today, we do currently support a beta version of GA4, and we invite you to read this help center article to learn more about how to integrate data from Google Analytics 4 into DashThis and the supported metrics. This help center article will be kept up to date, as will this post, to make sure you always have the latest information.

We are working hard on adding new metrics and dimensions in the next few weeks. We will do everything we can to completely replace what is available in the current version of Google Analytics Universal so you feel comfortable using this newer version (GA4). 

If for some reason, you prefer not to use Google Analytics 4 for now, you can still continue to use the Google Analytics Universal integration. However, keep in mind that when creating a new property in Google Analytics, Google is suggesting the GA4 setting by default. 

As for your Dashthis reporting, here are your two options : 

1. Create a 2nd dashboard for GA4 and monitor both dashboards simultaneously 
2. Connect GA4 to your existing Universal GA dashboard and create a specific GA4 section to have a side by side comparison

Dashthis’s beta version of GA4 

The Beta version of the integration has a limited number of KPIs, metrics, and dimensions. But our team will keep adding new ones as we get to a full release of the integration. 

The following KPIs are available from the Preset Widgets drop-down menu:

• Total users
• Sessions
• Event count
• Top traffic sources

Metrics : 

• Average engagement time per session
• Conversions
• Engagement rate
• Engaged sessions
• Event count
• Event value
• Sessions
• Total users
• Views

Dimensions :

• Session default channel grouping
• Event Name
• Page path + query string and screen class
• Session Campaign
• Session Medium
• Session Source
• First User Campaign
• First User Medium
• First User Source

What's coming up next 

Our engineering team is currently working on adding more metrics, dimensions and filters support to ensure an optimal reporting experience. We wanted to be fully transparent in our communication and give you a bit more details on what we are expecting to deliver in the upcoming weeks. 

Metrics : 

We are working on adding the support for all the 3 custom event metrics options available in GA4 such as custom event name, the average and total count for every custom metric in an account as well as the following metrics:

• Transactions
• Ecommerce purchases
• Item revenue
• Purchase Revenue
• Total revenue
• Average purchase revenue
• Event revenue
• Bounce rate
• Total purchasers
• Active users
• Purchaser conversion %
• Add-to-carts
• Checkouts
• Events per session
• Event count per user
• Views per session
• Average purchase revenue per user
• Transactions per purchaser
• Item list clicks
• Item list views
• Item promotion clicks
• Item promotion views
• Item views
• Cart-to-view rate
• Purchase-to-view rate
• Item quantity
• First-time purchaser conversion %
• First-time purchasers per new user
• First time purchasers
• New Users
• User Engagement Duration

Dimensions :

We are working on adding the support for all the custom event dimensions as well such as custom event name (user-scoped as well as event-scoped). We plan on adding those dimensions too:

• Age
• Gender
• City
• Country
• Landing page
• Page path and screen class
• Device category
• First user source / medium
• Session source / medium
• Campaign
• Default channel grouping
• Medium
• Source
• Source / medium
• Region
• Page location
• Page path + query string
• First user default channel grouping
• Full page URL
• Page path without query string
• Source platform
• Content group
• Content type
• Hostname
• Page referrer
• Page title
• Page title and screen class
• Page title and screen name
• Language
• First user source platform
• Session source platform
• Item brand
• Item category
• Item category 2
• Item category 3
• Item category 4
• Item category 5
• Item list name
• Item name
• Item promotion name
• Order coupon
• Search term
• Stream name
• Stream ID
• Is conversion event

Before you go… care to help us out?

We know this integration is very important to our DashThis users and that’s why we are committed to putting the GA4 update on our top priority list. Of course, we will communicate with full transparency any updates we have on our end. 

If you want to help us out by trying the beta version, or if you have any requests for metrics/dimensions, please don’t hesitate to contact your account manager or our support team. 

Happy reporting!