Let’s get to the point: on July 1st, 2023, Google will discontinue Universal Analytics – which has been the standard for web tracking since 2012. It is time to upgrade.
It is no secret that online marketing analytics is an integral part of measuring your SEO strategy. For many years, businesses and marketers have been struggling to keep up with the ever-changing rules of search engines to optimize their websites. If SEO and analytic tracking are important to your marketing strategy, then this change is critical.
Significant changes are coming in 2023
In the fall 2012, Google introduced Universal Analytics (UA) which became the standard for tracking data and measuring user’s web behavior. Website managers were tasked with applying essential UA codes into their website to ensure proper tracking and acquiring the coveted reports on their web performance.
This has been the standard until now. Google has recently announced that Universal Analytics will be discontinued and replaced by Google Analytics 4 (GA4). Until July 1, 2013, users can continue to collect data from web properties with UA installed. After this date, there will be a 6-month period of grace where users can still access the data – however, new data will not be processed.
Why You Should Switch Now!
Google is strongly encouraging users to make the switch to Google Analytics 4 prior to the July 2023 deadline.
The former UA tracking and the new GA4 tracking can be installed side-by-side, so you are tracking data simultaneously. The benefit of installing GA4 now is that you will accumulate data leading up to the deadline within your account. It will provide a continuity of data that can be referenced leading up to July 1st, 2023, since the prior years of tracking cannot be imported into the new analytics. With the discontinuation of UA, it is recommended that you export the data from Universal Analytics, so you have access to that historical information.
Why Analytics Are Important
In the world of marketing strategy, if you do not know how users are engaging with your website, then you do not know what is or is not working. How can you improve your marketing strategy without this information? You may end up trying to ‘fix’ the only things that are working on your website without the data required to make informed decisions. You may discover people are using your website in ways that you did not think about or realize.
Analytics gives you powerful insight into the behavior of your visitors, so you know what leads to successful conversions. It allows you to test and measure the success of any changes you make to try to improve your website.
Getting Help Setting Up Your Google Properties
For anyone who is not intimate with the Google ecosystem, it is a challenging experience. Even knowing where to log in, what tools are available, how to generate and install analytic code into a website can be frustrating and too technical for the average business owner.
Beyond that, knowing how to interpret the data and generating useful reports can be another level of frustration. It takes considerable time to learn the language and features of Google tools.
If you are a business owner looking for support in setting up and managing your Google analytics properties, we offer monthly Managed Marketing Services that can help support your business goals.
Managed Marketing provides our customers with access to a full team of professionals, in every aspect of marketing (marketing strategy, website design, social media, SEO, video, content creation and branding). You decide on the budget that fits your business, and our team is available to offer marketing services to meet your goals.
For more information about our Marketing Services and packages, please visit us at https://www.mtekdigital.ca/small-business-online-marketing/