Visitor statistics on the site are considered one of the most important things that help improve the content for visitors, as well as improving the user experience. The Google Statistics service is considered one of the best ways to obtain these statistics with great accuracy and high quality. So what will it be like with the new version of the GA4 service?
Google officially announced the new version of the Google Statistics 4 service , which has already begun trial operation on millions of websites, blogs, and applications around the world. Google has indicated that the old version of the Google Statistics service will end completely on July 1, 2023, which calls on you to quickly switch to the new version of the statistics service to maintain your site visitor data statistics.
In this article, we will learn about the most prominent developments that appeared in the new version of Google Statistics GA4, and we will also explain how to move from the old version of statistics to the new version to avoid losing data at the final time announced by Google.
Will you lose your site data if you use the old version?
The old version of Google Statistics will continue to work and collect and analyze data until the first day of July 2023, which is what Google indicated in the notice that appears to all users of the service:
At the beginning of the announced date, the old version of Statistics will stop working permanently, which means that no more data will appear inside the old version, and shortly after that the entire service will be deleted and there will be no way to access the old data.
The chance of losing site data statistics will be high for those who will not switch to the new version of Google Analytics GA4 before the announced date.
If you switch to the new version of the statistics service, you will protect your site’s statistics from loss, which we will explain in detail within the article.
The most prominent features of the new version of Google Statistics GA4
The new version of the Google Analytics service provides many features that encourage website owners to upgrade to it as quickly as possible, and we discuss the most prominent of these features and their benefits for every website or application owner.
A more intuitive and navigable control panel
The new version of Google Analytics 4 comes with an easy-to-navigate control panel that provides options for navigating between the different statistics parts of the site or application:
As you can see, the number of items in the new control panel has been shortened, and in return, more data reports have been added that you can access by entering each of the tabs in the control panel.
The new version 4 is based on Events
The new version of Google Analytics tries to focus more on the events that a visitor performs within the website/application.
In the main interface of the new version we find a tab (Average Interaction Duration), which was old in the (Session Duration) version:
Therefore, the new version will generally focus on more accurate data for site/application visitors, and this means that we will see more detailed data on the actions and method of interaction carried out by visitors within the site.
Providing forecast-based statistics
Do you want to obtain data on visitors who are expected to make a purchase within the site or application during the coming period of time?
Yes, in the new version of Google Statistics 4, there will be reports on expected visitor events within the site, which means the ability to obtain more details about the type of visitors expected to take an action during the coming period of time.
This predictions feature came thanks to the use of artificial intelligence techniques from Google, which analyzes user data during a certain period of time, and based on the analysis process, it provides highly accurate predictions regarding the operations that visitors are likely to perform during the coming period.
User behavior forecast reports that are currently available within the new version of Statistics are as follows:
Predicting a purchase: You can obtain data about users who are expected to make a purchase within the site or application within the next seven days.
Prediction of downtime: This is data that helps you predict users or visitors who may be inactive on the site or application during the next seven days.
Profits forecast: These statistics are useful for online store owners to know the profits expected to be collected from visitors or users within the next 28 days.
Certainly, the feature of anticipating the behavior of visitors and users is one of the most prominent features that were announced in the new version of the Google Statistics service, and certainly this feature works by analyzing and collecting visitor data during past periods of time, and accordingly it provides expectations about the actions that are performed during the periods. Coming.
Smart search bar in new version GA4
One of the most enjoyable features in using the new version of Statistics is the smart search bar within the reports, which you can use directly to obtain data that you enter, such as (site users from Egypt during the current year):
Directly, the search bar will provide a quick answer to your question from within the database that contains all of your site’s data and statistics:
Therefore, the advanced search bar in the new version of statistics is considered one of the most prominent features that helps you access specific data within your site by typing it. The search bar will provide quick and concise answers to answers instead of entering reports and spending a lot of time browsing them.
Upgrade to Google Statistics GA4
After you learned about the most prominent features that the new version of Google Statistics provides you, let us now begin explaining how to upgrade from the current old version to the latest version 4 to take advantage of the features it provides to website owners.
First, log in to your site’s Google Statistics account, then scroll to the ( Administrator ) tab and from there enter the ( Google Statistics Setting Assistant 4 ) tab:
In this step, you are invited to create another property on Google Statistics for the new version 4, while maintaining the old property that you are currently working on, by clicking on the ( First Steps ) button in order to begin the process of installing the service:
After that, click on the ( Create Website ) button to create the new interface for Google Statistics version 4:
After creating the site on Google Statistics, you will be asked to place a verification tag inside the source code of your site, and you can do this by clicking on the (Get tagging instructions) button.
A group of options will appear, including (adjust tag settings) , click on it:
It will open the Tag Adding Instructions page, where you click on the Get Tag Installation Instructions button
Now the link tag will appear to you, which is a programming code in JavaScript. All you have to do is copy this tag and place it inside your site in order to prove ownership of the site:
To insert the tag into your site, you can go to the WordPress control panel, then go to the ( Edit Template File ) tab, which you find inside the ( Appearance ) tab, then go to the header.php file and paste the tag into the file in the specified location, and save the page after that:
Note : If you have previously added the tag for the old version of Universal Analytics, it is best not to delete it if you still want to access the data provided by the old version.
You can also check out other ways to install Google Analytics on your WordPress site .
After a few minutes, the service will begin collecting data for your site within the new interface in Google Analytics 4, and the old interface will remain exactly as it is until the announced date of its final closure. Your site data will be imported from the old interface during this period, so you will not lose any data or statistics that were in the interface. Old Google Analytics if you upgrade to the new version before the final time allowed, as we indicated in the introduction to the article.
Conclusion
The new version of Google Statistics GA4 comes with features that were not available in previous versions, the most prominent of which, as we mentioned, is the feature of providing predictions of the actions that the user will take within the site during the coming periods of time, and therefore it will be beneficial for your site to upgrade to the latest version in order to be able to analyze visitor data directly. More professional, which helps you understand the behavior of your visitors more clearly, which ultimately leads to improving the user experience in general.
Also, one of the most prominent features announced by Google in version 4 of the statistics service is that data for both the website and the phone application will be collected within the same place without the need to create an account for the site and another for the phone.
Of course, this update is very useful for website owners that have mobile applications, as it will be easy to manage website data as well as the mobile application from one place, as it becomes easier and more flexible than before.
