Technical insights - GA4 - Next Generation Analytics
Google Analytics 4 is the latest version of Google's analytics service that offers a more comprehensive understanding of user behavior by collecting data from websites and apps.
Google Analytics 4 is an analytics service that allows you to measure traffic and engagement across your websites and apps. It is the newest version of Google Analytics and is designed to provide a more comprehensive understanding of the customer journey by collecting both website and app data and using event-based data instead of session-based data like it previous version.
Google Analytics 4 offers various features and capabilities, including the ability to set up events to track specific actions or interactions on your websites or apps. Additionally, it measures ecommerce activity and item-level refund metrics, tracks and analyzes exceptions or errors that occur during user interactions, measures views of your website or app pages, and sends user IDs to track and analyze user behavior.
This new version of Google Analytics provides marketers with more effective analysis of important customer usage metrics and goes beyond simply tracking traffic to provide deeper insights into user behavior and engagement.
Overall, Google Analytics 4 is a powerful analytics service that allows businesses to gain valuable insights into their websites and apps and make data-informed decisions to optimize their digital presence.
Sources:
Introduction to Google Analytics 4
GA4: Introducing the next generation of Analytics, Google Analytics 4
The Beginner's Guide to Google Analytics 4 - Moz
Google Tag Manager and Marketing Tags
Google Tag Manager (GTM) is a free tool to create, store and manage marketing tags without modifying website code. Marketing tags are small pieces of code that track user interaction on a website and collect website visitor data, e.g. PDF download or duration and number of page visits. These code snippets need to be placed in your website code for Google Analytics to function and collect data. However, these code additions and modifications impose a high risk of misalignment or depreciation due to neglect or additions of duplicates. Further, outdated or contradictory tags can cause massive changes in reported datasets. Thus, code additions and modifications can cause breaks in data collection or breaking the functions of other website elements such as marketo form display. GTM mitigates these issues, because it enables the installation, management and deployment of marketing tags from within its software instead of from the website code.
How does GTM work?
When a user action triggers a tag, e.g. by clicking a link or button or loading a page, GTM recognizes this event and injects the code snippet into the website code and fires the relevant event associated with it.
Signal fires that light the way
When a tag is fired, GTM tracks the user behavior and collects the event data associated with the tag. This trigger bound code injection and execution reduces the code on a website while minimizing risks for implementation errors
Benefit of GTM
GTM can extend Google Analytics' functionality by making it easier to deploy and manage various tracking codes. With GTM, users can integrate various tracking tools other than Google Analytics, which can help create a more comprehensive understanding of website traffic and user behavior.
GTM makes it possible to track more than just pageviews, visitors, and other standard metrics, enabling website owners to track specific actions and events, like clicks, form submissions, etc., through custom tracking codes. GTM also allows users to set up variables and tags, create and manage events and macros, and test tags before publishing.
