Google Analytics Archives - NetElixir

Preparing for the Cookieless World With Google Analytics 4

Phani Santhosh — Thu, 13 May 2021 14:19:04 +0000

The cookieless world will change how marketers gather and use information about their customers along the buyer’s journey.

But this does not mean that all your customer data will be completely lost in the privacy-first era. Google Analytics 4 (GA4) can empower marketers to bridge the gaps in user identity and conversion measurement caused by the impending third-party cookie deprecation. While it will be a challenge to overcome, preparing for the cookieless future now will help make the transition seamless.

Today, we explore some key insights to get you started with how GA4 will help you thrive in the cookieless world.

How Google Analytics 4 Will Work in the Cookieless World

">GA4 is Google’s future-proof analytics platform that is already aligned to the heightened privacy expectations. It has built-in compliance to regulatory developments such as GDPR, CCPA, etc., so you don’t have to worry about compromising customers’ privacy. For instance, GA4 automatically anonymizes a user’s IP address, which is considered personal data under GDPR restrictions.

What makes GA4 different from Universal Analytics is that the platform’s tracking is completely event-based, while Universal Analytics is session-based. Google Analytics 4 categorizes different events to provide more detailed information about every activity a user takes.

From a data collection standpoint, GA4 offers more data controls for users to better manage how they collect, retain, and ultimately use analytics data. With better control comes a stricter adherence to privacy standards.

Better control over your data also provides more granular control for ad personalization. GA4 lets users choose when to use data to optimize ads and when to limit data use to measurement.

Enhancing Audience Profiles with a Machine Learning Algorithm

The platform is built around machine learning, so GA4 will develop and grow over time to learn from and predict your brand’s consumer data. The machine learning algorithm will be used to define predictive metrics that are currently live and those that will be added by Google over time. These predictive metrics are used to decode and ultimately predict customer’s online behavioral patterns to define more accurate audiences, even without third-party cookie identifiers.

The machine learning algorithm of Google Analytics 4 can help marketers build out customer and audience profiles.

Currently, third-party cookies are the prerequisite for conversion measurement and attribution. In the cookieless future, GA4 will:

Allow you to create audiences based on churn probability to better reengage and recapture new and existing customers.
Use conversion modeling powered by machine learning to bridge any gaps when a subset of conversion cannot be fully tracked without those third-party cookies.
Use advanced machine learning to track cross-device and cross-platform user journeys.
Automatically surface relevant insights around your consumer behaviors. For example, GA4 can show you a rise in demand for a certain category based on a change in new customers’ activity.

The more detailed user information a machine learning can pull the better. A stronger base for machine learning algorithms allows them to make more accurate and informed predictions — which allows marketers to build more successful campaigns.

How NetElixir Can Help You Succeed on GA4 in the Post-Cookie World

NetElixir can take care of the complete technical implementation of GA4 across standard e-commerce platforms including Shopify, MIVA, and WooCommerce. Additionally, NetElixir can help you with:

Customizing the tracking pixels for more advanced tracking.
Upgrading your tracking pixels to GTM or global site tag prerequisite for GA4.
Data validation and other setup-related maintenance checks after the implementation.
Establishing some best practices around reporting, insights, audiences, and events over time.

GA4 can help you make the most out of your customer data, but for specific questions into implementing GA4 across your e-commerce website,request a consultation with our experts today.

The post Preparing for the Cookieless World With Google Analytics 4 appeared first on NetElixir.

Setting up Google Analytics in WordPress

Rahulsingh Rathour, SEO Account Planner — Thu, 11 Mar 2021 17:09:51 +0000

WordPress is an open-source content management system (CMS) that launched in 2001. Since then, the platform has grown immensely to be one of the most popular website hosting services and WordPress currently powers nearly 40% of websites. As many brands run their website and blog through WordPress, setting up Google Analytics in WordPress is crucial to understanding your site’s traffic.

Google Analytics is a simple tool that helps brands track everything that is happening on their website. By running Google Analytics, you can definitively report how your website is performing and make adjustments to bring in more users.

What Does Google Analytics Show?

Google Analytics tracks important information about your website’s users to help you better engage with them. Reports from Google Analytics show:

How many people are visiting your website.
How visitors are finding your website (redirect through social media, direct search, etc.).
How much time they are spending on your site and different pages.
Your site’s most visited pages.

To get started with tracking and understanding your website traffic, first you need to set up a Google Analytics account. It’s easy and free to use!

Simply go to Google Analytics, click “Set up for Free,” and enter your information.

Once entered, scroll down and click “Next”.

Because you want to set up Google Analytics in WordPress, install it on your website by clicking “Web”.

Scroll down and click “Next.” Enter your website name and URL you want to track, as pictured below.

Then, click “Create.” You have successfully created your Google Analytics account!

How to Set Up Google Analytics in WordPress

After creating your Google Analytics account, you want to connect this account with your WordPress account. Google Analytics is a simple, well-coded, and powerful plugin. To install it, go to Dashboard → Plugins → Add New.

Type “GA google analytics” in the plugins search box. The plugin should be at the top of the list, at the top left, pictured below.

Install this plugin and then click “Activate.”

Next, visit the “Plugin Settings” Panel on the left hand side of your WordPress dashboard. Enter your Google Analytics Tracking ID (which was given to you after you set up your Google Analytics account).

Universal analytics is a default standard for collecting and organizing user data to more accurately measure user behavior. Global site tag helps track conversions across multiple events and limits managing multiple tags for multiple products. Legacy is a library for measuring how users interact with your site. It is recommended you use a newer tracking version with a new Google Analytics account.

Finally, configure any other plugin settings as needed.

When you are done, save changes. Within 24 to 48 hours, you can log in to your Google Analytics account to view your traffic.

For any additional questions about your Google Analytics account, WordPress features, or e-commerce website in general, NetElixir’s tech support team is here to help!

What Google Analytics 4 Means For Marketers

Phani Santhosh — Tue, 24 Nov 2020 16:10:02 +0000

Insights into the Benefits of Google Analytics for Digital Marketers

For many years, companies have been using Google Analytics to make profitable business decisions, as well as to understand the overall landscape of their business. Even after the rise of many analytics platforms, the majority of the businesses continue to use GA as it simplifies data and presents it in several ways at no cost. To further improve the tracking of a user’s journey, Google has launched GA4 with better AI-powered insights, less cross-platform gaps, cleaner data visualizations, improved engagement tracking, and more.

GA4 allows you to see your website activity and visitors through a different lens. Instead of page views and events, you will track every interaction as an event with associated parameters. Instead of goals, you will configure conversions. Instead of views, you will set up data streams. So, regardless of the state of your current GA implementation, you will need to re-think and re-design how you capture the interactions, metrics, and segments you need in order to measure and optimize your website, app, or digital marketing initiatives.

So, what does GA4 mean for digital marketers? Take a look for yourself:

NEXT-GEN GOOGLE ANALYTICS:

The latest iteration of Google Analytics, also known as Google Analytics 4, has become the talk of the town. This is a timely launch. Consumer behavior has significantly changed in the last few years, and the ongoing pandemic has accentuated those changes. Recent changes to privacy and regulations, including cookie policy changes, have also restricted targeting capabilities for marketers.

For these reasons, an improvement in analytics is one of the top priorities for most marketers (see Forrester survey). Such improvements will allow marketers to better measure the worth of every marketing dollar and remain prepared for what’s next.

WHAT IS CHANGING:

GA 4 properties are now the default when you create a new property for a website, an app, or both.
Universal Analytics refers to the previous generation of Analytics. This was the default property type for websites prior to October 14, 2020.

GOOGLE ANALYTICS 4 HIGHLIGHTS:

WHAT NETELIXIR RECOMMENDS:

The product is still in the nascent stage and innovations are rolling out. Continue using your existing GA properties. However, start creating a new GA 4 property and test it for a few weeks alongside existing Universal GA properties.
Aim at Q1 2021 for a full-fledged rollout. The testing can begin once the holiday season is over or code freeze comes to an end.
Once the data starts flowing through GA 4, define more intelligent audiences to fine-tune your marketing efforts with the specific nuances of high-value customers.
Create a long term plan to slowly adopt contextual audience targeting powered by machine learning as cookie or user ID based behavioral targeting loses its relevance down the line.
Use machine learning-driven predictions to better understand latent and untapped growth opportunities.

To learn more, check out these articles on Google support and the Google blog. Please reach out to your NetElixir team if you have any questions.

NetElixir has an array of analytics solutions to help you reconfigure your GA4 data capture.

For Further Reading:

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