In 2020, over 2 billion people purchased goods and services online. Ecommerce, even in the midst of a global pandemic, is booming. With Google Analytics 4 (GA4), ecommerce businesses can build on this momentum.
Though a daunting thought at first, moving your business from the older Universal Analytics (UA) to GA4 is not as complicated as it may seem. And once installed, Google’s latest digital property can transform your ecommerce insights and bring you closer to your target audience.
TL;DR
Headline: Business owners can maintain their ecommerce data while gaining new audience insights.
Highlight: With GA4, you get more control over audience preservation and recreation. These insights can feedback directly into optimizing your ecommerce operations.
Detailed events: What products do customers view most? Why are they abandoning their cart? GA4 now provides a range of ecommerce events that can be tracked pre-checkout and post-sale.
Know your community: From audience templating to predictive metrics, the new GA4 property brings you closer to your customers with unparalleled insights.
Recommended action: Get clear on the relationship between your existing audience data and how your ecommerce is set up in the GA4 property. Understanding how your digital sales funnel performs can further optimize the way you target your potential customers.
How to setup ecommerce in GA4
In such an interconnected world, ecommerce remains vital to so many businesses across the globe. Understandably, the migration from UA to GA4 can cause stress and concern. But, as the resources below outline, you have more control than ever when you use GA4 for ecommerce.
Resources:
Here is a great and extensive resource for developers working within ecommerce. In GA4, you are now able to send product list, impression, promotion and sales data through a number of suggested ecommerce events. This guide describes how to implement Google Analytics 4 (GA4) ecommerce features using Google Tag Manager on a website.
With this useful video from Loves Data, you’ll learn how to track ecommerce transactions in GA4 (Google Analytics 4) using Google Tag Manager and a custom data layer. You’ll also learn how to configure a new GA4 event tag in Google Tag Manager to send ecommerce transaction details to your GA4 property.
This article is for website owners who want to collect ecommerce data in both their Universal Analytics and Google Analytics 4 properties. You’ll also become familiar with some best practice information for mobile app owners who use Google Analytics for Firebase.
Loves Data are back at it again with another great video. This time, learn how to set up Google Analytics 4 (GA4) on Shopify. You will walk through how to add the tracking code, ensuring your reports don't include self-referrals, and how to send ecommerce transactions to your GA4 reports.
This valuable article by Napkyn Analytics is the first of a two part series that takes you through ecommerce events. This particular article focuses on pre-checkout eventing and provides a step-by-step process to using GA4 to track pre-checkout events specific to ecommerce.
Written before the relaunch of App + Web as Google Analytics 4, every time the author mentions A+W, just replace it with Google Analytics 4 or GA4.
The second article to the aforementioned two part series is written after the relaunch of GA4. This article builds on the previous by building out purchase tracking specific to GA4.
How to create audiences and import into GA4
Anytime there is a major shift in the data landscape, the first thing that springs to any marketer's mind is - “Oh no, what about my audiences!” But do not fret, as Google continues to push for a migration from UA to GA4, there are plenty of avenues in which to preserve, replicate and recreate your audiences.
Resources:
Through the Google Analytics Help Centre, this series of articles covers audiences, remarketing, and User-ID’s for GA4 including:
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Create, edit, and archive audiences
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Suggested audiences
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Audience triggers
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Predictive metrics
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Predictive audiences
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Enable remarketing with Google Analytics data
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Activate Google signals for Google Analytics 4 properties
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Remarketing lists for search ads
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User-ID for cross-platform analysis
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User-ID limits and caveats
Hosted by Loves Data, this video covers audience lists in Google Analytics 4 (GA4). You will learn how to create audiences, how you can use them inside Google Analytics, and how to ensure GA4 is linked to Google Ads so you can use them with your campaigns.
In this story, Seer Interactive provides detailed insight into remarketing audiences on Google Analytics. Although released with UA in mind, some of the practical tips and actions can be applied to GA4.
The crew at Paid Media Pros have also produced a helpful video about audiences. As the way we create audiences for GA4 changes, they go through some great examples that might complement the articles listed in the Google Analytics Help Centre.
Optimize Smart have also published an incredibly useful resource that covers creating custom audiences in GA4 thoroughly. Beginning with an insightful breakdown of audiences in general, they go on to cover audience templates; predictive audiences; how to create a new audience; edit an audience; archive an audience; and sequencing and excluding groups.
We know it’s easy to become overwhelmed while setting up ecommerce in GA4. That’s why we’re here to chat and help set you up, all you need to do is get in touch.