Point & Counterpoint: Why you should give GA4 a chance

There is a lot of negativity out there when it comes to Google Analytics 4. I get it. It’s a new product that looks, feels, and works differently from what we’re all used to in Universal Analytics. And as many readers would rightly suggest, it’s still missing features. All that being said, I’m here to offer an unpopular opinion: GA4 is actually a great tool. Not only that, it’s a lot more resilient for the future (think privacy, cookies, scaled data models).  I want to address some of the bigger image issues facing GA4 today. So let’s take a look at some of the biggest complaints and counterpoints to why you should go all in on Google Analytics 4.  Point 1: Universal Analytics is just fine, no need to rock
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The Ultimate Guide for setting up a Google Analytics 4 property

Are you setting up a GA4 property for the first time? Here are my top 10 must-haves for getting your new GA4 property up and running fast and with settings organized to help you make the most of your analytics data! Follow these tips and you’ll be well on your way to having a best practice GA4 set up. The first 3 tips are focused on getting your GA4 property enabled and collecting data, and the following 7 focus on ensuring you have a well-organized and robust GA4 property set up.  Creating a GA4 property and collecting data 1/ Create a Google Analytics 4 property This first step is actually really easy. You’ll go to GA, create a new property, and the default will be a new GA4 property. Go
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5 Quick Tips to help you better use GA4

Google Analytics 4 (aka GA4) is so different (looking & acting) that it can be really overwhelming to start digging in. So here are 5 quick tips to help you feel more comfortable and better use GA4. Tip 1: Make the reporting UI work for you! For the first time in GA history, GA4 allows you to actually modify the UI, both the reports themselves and the left nav organization of reports. This means you can do things like build out report collections for specific teams so they have a clear place to go for their reporting needs. Here you can see a collection of my favorite reports: You can do these modifications yourself by navigating to the “Library” section of GA4 (bottom left hand nav when you are in
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Where did my Bounce Rate go?? Meet Engaged Sessions in GA4

Bounce rate is a metric that’s mentioned a lot when discussing user engagement, but it’s not necessarily the beating pulse for a site’s health that it’s sometimes made out to be. This is in large part due to the fundamental changes with how websites are designed today (vs 10-15 years ago when GA was a much newer tool for website analysis) and how users interact with them. Google Analytics has recently replaced bounce rate with a new form of measuring user engagement. Here’s what you need to know. What Bounce Rate Represents A “bounce” is recorded whenever a user visits a single page on your site or app without interacting more deeply.  But Bounce Rate generally only tells you that there is a problem, while deeper digging is required to
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Anomaly Detection in Google Analytics Intelligence

We’ve had ‘Custom Alerts’ in Google Analytics for a very long time. They used to look like this: They recently got an facelift and now look nicer, but the data is still the same: I’ve used these alerts for years to help me detect changes in traffic patterns as they occur (by sending an email alert) rather than at a later point during analysis. They still serve this purpose well. But when it comes to understanding what is driving an anomaly, or even detecting it and it’s degree without previously setting up an alert, the new Anomaly Detection features in Google Analytics Intelligence really shine. Anomaly Detection in Google Analytics Intelligence helps us answer a very important question (we may not have even known we had): “What are the statistically
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Testing with a Rapid Optimization Plan

If you’ve ever set out to A/B test a whole site redesign, you must have come across the question of ‘What do we do if the new site, that we’ve spent so much time and money on, doesn’t win?’ That’s a fair question. A very fair one. In fact, if you are not asking yourself that question before starting down the road of testing a site redesign, you should reevaluate your testing plan, because it’s a very real possibility that the new site will not, in fact, perform better than the old one. That could happen for many reasons: users are used to your old site, and seeing a new one may be a jarring or disorienting experience to them you may have optimized the heck out of the old
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One year, 365 days, 12 months, 1/10th of a decade… Looking back & forward.

This morning I woke up to the following email in my inbox: Dear Krista, Congratulations! You have been at Google for 365 days, 1/10th of a decade, >3.15 x 1010 milliseconds, 20% of a lustrum or 0.001 of a millennium and today is your 1st Google Birthday 🙂 A big Thank You for all your contributions over the past 12 months. Why not take 60 seconds to recall your first Google year and enjoy a swift walk down recent memory lane enjoying all you have achieved in this time. Happy Birthday! So, in that spirit, here are some of my reflections on my first 365 days, 1/10th of a decade, etc at Google. 1. Where did the last year go? The pace of life/work/innovation around here is insane. I find it really hard
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